A clear vision to banish river's murk

THE Leven rises in Kildale on the edge of the North York Moors, travels 30 miles through Great Ayton and Stokesley and joins the Tees at Yarm. The river's supporters would like it to be clear as a mountain stream, although just now it is anything but.

"There's a lot of sediment in the river, most likely coming from run-off from farmland," says Ben Lamb, the manager of the Tees River Trust.

The trust has been set up to improve the water quality, the land and the wildlife, too – the river plays an important role in fish migration. It's the first potential spawning ground salmon come to.

The Leven flows through fine clay which is easily suspended in water and therein lies the trouble. "The main problem for the salmon is that the sediment will settle out into the gravel," says Ben. "It almost acts like

a concrete."

The salmon attempt to spawn but then have insufficient oxygen flow reaching their eggs. For the eggs that do hatch, the sediment blocks up the gills of the baby fish at the alevin and the fry stage.

Unless there is clean gravel on the bottom of the river, they may not survive. And if they don't, the impact of this is felt right up the food chain. Many birds, such as kingfishers, will go hungry because they depend on the young salmon for food.

"Sediment is topsoil, mostly," says Ben Lamb. "Topsoil to farmers is their biggest capital worth. It takes hundreds of years to recreate topsoil, so one of the ways we're hoping to reduce sediment is by pointing out that simple fact, and helping farmers save their topsoil."

So far farmers have welcomed advice which has helped them reverse topsoil loss. One strategy is for them to avoid ploughing right up to the river bank and to put in buffer strips – rough long grass, for instance, which would stop silt flowing down a hillside. Another tactic is to think about "wheelings", the tracks left by farm machinery and tractors. The same set is used throughout the season and farmers are being encouraged to chisel out the ruts before they become

too compacted and channel soil run-off.

The river trust is applying for grants as it seeks to raise about 250,000. Part of this would go to employing a project officer able to offer farmers specialist advice. The money would also be spent on buying drinking troughs for cattle farms so that the animals no longer do damage to the river banks as they go down to drink from the Leven. Another idea is to put in a "ring-feeder", with hard standing, further away from the river. This would be done with the help of FWAG, the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group.

Anglers on the river are also playing their part.

"Sediment is one of the major problems with the Leven," says John Gifford, secretary of the Hutton Rudby Fly Fishing Club. "It's a river (whose level) goes up and down a lot, and whenever we have floods we have a tremendous amount of sediment in the river. What we are trying to do is ask our members to fill in log-books of all they catch, so that we get a measure of how many they're catching and what the population is."

Monitoring fish numbers, it seems, can be subjective. "When my son and I started fishing something like 30 years ago, very few members of the club fished," says John. "When Andrew and I started fishing, we were both mad keen and there was an abundance of fish. It seems to me now it's more difficult to catch fish than it was. But I'm 30 years older and I'm not as good as I was."

The river also has a big role to play in attracting tourists into the small towns which lie along it. Nat Smith is the chairman of the Stokesley River Leven Group, a charity formed in 2003 after concerns were raised about the poor state of the river as it flows through the town.

"We want to improve the banks by putting groynes out to catch the silt," he says.

The group thinks the answer would be to narrow the river channel, forcing the water to flow faster.

"It's an attractive market town and the riverside is the jewel in the crown.

"It attracts many visitors and helps the businesses in the middle of town. If we can make it more attractive – natural, not chintzy – it will attract the visitors. There's been a lot of criticism in the last few years about it being a mess."

Ben Lamb adds: "Fish provide an important food source for many of the animals, mammals and birds that you find on the river banks, and an increasingly intact wildlife corridor will see a lot more wildlife knocking around the valley."

CW 11/9/10