Our Latest News
in this issue…
BigGive Fundraising Success | Volunteers needed for ‘Outfall Safaris’ | Invasive Species Week | INNS Training Opportunity | Rivers4Life Photography Competition | Ousewem Update | Upskilling the Local Community
2500 raised!
With spring firmly underway and temperatures rising, invasive non-native species (INNS) like Himalayan balsam are once again reappearing besides our rivers and streams. Find out how you can support with INNS reporting and removal below.
We are also very grateful to all who donated to our recent BigGive green match fund campaign – we raised the full target of £2500 for our volunteering programme!
Invasive Species Week – Why it Matters
Invasive non-native species (plants and animals) otherwise known as INNS, threaten the survival of native wildlife and our natural ecosystems. So, for one week every year, organisations across the UK and Ireland come together to raise awareness about INNS and the things we can all do to prevent their spread.
This year Invasive Species Week takes place from 12-18 May and we’ll be posting events and activities that everyone can get involved in within their own river catchment on our social media pages in the run up and throughout INNS week
Learn to Identify Invasive Species (INNS)
As part of our own work restoring the catchments of the rivers in the Yorkshire Dales, we are aiming to build a more accurate picture of where the INNS species of giant hogweed and Japanese knotweed grow so we can plan future control in a systematic way.
To support this we are offering INNS mapping training to volunteers who are willing to look for and record invasive species whilst they are out for a walk. We use the INNS mapper app, which allows us to record the presence, and also importantly, the absence of specific plants. NB. You do not need to be confident on plant ID to take part as this will form part of the training.
Following the training we will coordinate survey areas for all participants.
Our current target areas are around the Rivers Swale and Ure.
The scheduled training sessions are as follows
Thursday 15 May, Richmond Fosse Car Park 10-12
Thursday 15 May, Ripon City Wetlands 1.30-3.30
If you are interested please sign up via the button below:
Rivers4Life Photography Competition
Don’t forget… we are running a competition to find the best photographs of our Yorkshire Dales rivers and wildlife, to be included in our Rivers4Life exhibition which is our project, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to players of the National Lottery.
Share with us your favourite photos taken in the catchments of the Trust which includes the rivers Swale, Ure, Nidd, Wharfe and Ouse, and associated tributaries. We are looking for amazing images showing our beautiful rivers and streams and wildlife. (Please do not include people in your images.)
All entrants will be in with the chance to feature in the Rivers4Life summer exhibition taking place at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes from late June to early September 2026, and in a future Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust calendar! There are four stages to the competition, covering all the seasons.
The spring season covers March to May and the deadline for entries is 5 June 2025.
Enter via the button below:
Catch us at these events!
If you’d like the chance to talk to us directly about our work then look out for Catherine Mason YDRT’s education and engagement officer and our Rivers4Life van at Otley Show on Saturday 17 May – which is the oldest agricultural show in the country!
If you can’t make that then we will also be at the River Kin Festival on 20 May, 12 – 6pm. This is an art-related public engagement event alongside the River Nidd in central Knaresborough where visitors are invited to express their memories, relationships and thoughts connected to the River Nidd along with the opportunity to explore riverkinship and its potential for generating alternative approaches to river management in the UK.
Join us on an Outfall Safari!
We are currently looking for volunteers to help us survey Bilton and Oak becks in Harrogate.
Pollution issues around Harrogate and other urban watercourses are often caused by failures in the surface water drainage network, as a result of misconnections between the surface water and foul drainage system.
Outfall Safaris are a reliable way of identifying polluting surface outfalls in urban rivers. Surveying during dry weather helps to locate misconnections (such as dirty water from washing machines wrongly connected to the surface water network) that input foul waste into rivers, compromising water quality and impacting biodiversity.
Information from the surveys will be passed to Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency to investigate and rectify.
Volunteer training will be held on the 21 May from 10:00 – 16:00 in Harrogate, following which volunteers will be allocated their own section of beck to survey.
Find out more or book your place via the button below:
Upskilling our local community
We’ve recently taken a regional lead in training local citizen scientists, community groups and neighbouring river trusts to assess and monitor local rivers. This initiative will collect valuable data on the physical health of Yorkshire rivers using the MoRPh survey to support river conservation and management.
Training in MoRPh was part of the CaSTCo (Catchment Systems Thinking Cooperative) initiative and delivered by Cartographer to volunteers and practitioners from the Nidd Action Group (NAG) and the Don Catchment Rivers Trust.
Sarah Lonsdale, our project manager for river enhancement said: “The MoRPh system is a brilliant tool that involves conducting detailed surveys of a river’s physical habitats, capturing data on elements like sediments, vegetation, and human impacts, helping develop an understanding river habitat condition, identifying restoration opportunities, and tracking changes over time. Broadening the available data sets for Yorkshire Dales rivers and catchments will help YDRT immensely in terms of prioritising projects and arguing our case for important funding to restore and improve those that have deteriorated the most.
“MoRPh has been widely adopted across the country, but it is still very underutilised in the north, so we are aiming to lead the way in upskilling environmental groups and other river trusts to have this important survey and mapping tool in their citizen science skills toolkit.”
Ousewem Update
It’s been a busy month for our Ousewem delivery team.
They have now have delivered a third Ousewem project, this one is in Hawes and consists of a series of scrapes and a buffer strip which will store water and provide habitat for wading birds.
On 11 April more than 50 practitioners, academics, and regulators gathered for the Yorkshire NFM Communities of Practice (CoP) event. Supported by Ousewem and the Environment Agency, our Ousewem NFM programme manager Amanda Crossfield hosted the event which aimed to share good practice for better NFM monitoring across Yorkshire. You can read more about this here.
The team have also been out installing monitoring equipment at Hunton to capture baseline flows and velocities. This will help them evaluate the effectiveness of the NFM interventions they will be installing, including a new 10ha wetland. The monitoring is also being supported by students from the Dept for Environment and Geography at the University of York.
Ousewem’s latest video (view via the button below) highlights how collaboration underpins our NFM work. Filmed at our first Ousewem project at Smaden Head Farm, you can hear from some of the farmers, landowners and local authorities we work in partnership with.
