The past month has been a particularly busy one. It started with a site meeting at the Woodland Trust’s Yonder Oak Wood on 30 October, which involved a great mix of people – from the Woodland Trust, Lympstone’s water quality, flood resilience, and wildlife groups, the Westcountry Rivers Trust, and Parklife SW (who do a lot of the work at the site with volunteers). As many of you know, Yonder Oak Wood is 134 acres just above the Lympstone parish boundary but at the top of the Wotton Brook catchment. The management of the land here is important for Lympstone because the surface water runoff carries sediment and nutrients into the Wotton Brook. We’re very pleased that the Woodland Trust are planting trees and planning ‘leaky dams’ which slow the water flow – bringing benefits to water quality, biodiversity, and flood risk. We also discussed the potential for a wetland, which would bring further significant benefits. Overall, it was an interesting and inspiring morning, and it helped to strengthen the partnership between all the groups/organisations.involved.
Elsewhere, we’ve identified several other opportunities for ‘nature-based solutions’, such as wetlands, and we’re in the process of talking with landowners and investigating the potential. It’s early days but it’s great to start the conversations. We’ll keep you informed of progress. Another important event this month was the gathering of the Water Guardians on 11 November. We got together to discuss the overall project progress and the water quality monitoring results since May (an impressive 160 water quality tests at 23 sites, and 9 riverfly invertebrate surveys at 5 sites). We agreed that we can’t draw clear conclusions until we have at least a year’s data, particularly since we haven’t sampled through the winter months yet – but the data will soon provide a very valuable baseline. It was good to hear about people’s experiences, conversations with other residents, and some of the wildlife that has been identified in and around the brook.
Overall, there’s been good progress, but there’s much more to do, and we need your help. Please contact us if you see signs of pollution (photos always help). The start of the construction of the Dinan Way Extension road project brings a risk of pollution, e.g., from silt laden runoff, and potential releases of oils, chemicals, and other building materials, which can all impact water life.
Thanks for your support.
Contact: Lympstone Water Quality Group (Clem Davies, Sara Davies, Justin Smallwood, Caroline Lewis, Barry Lewis, Rebecca Abrahams)
Sara Davies sarabragg@aol.com, Tel. 07855 344386;
Caroline Lewis carolinelewis999@gmail.com, Tel. 07792 136638.
