This month, the new River Champions scheme was launched at Essex and Suffolk Water’s Hanningfield Water Treatment Works.

After talks from the Wilder Rivers and Wilder Communities team, participants were able to dive nose-first into the world of water quality testing – taking part in a ‘Taste and Odour’ session and enjoying a tour around the water quality labs.

River Champions is an evolution of the River Wardens scheme, that will enable many more people to take action for their river and help achieve our goal of 1 in 4 people acting for wildlife.

River Champions, as part of our Team Wilder approach, introduces a much stronger community-led focus – encouraging groups to self-organise events and projects, with guidance and support from our Wilder Communities team. 

The citizen science projects – such as River Walkovers, Riverfly, eDNA surveying - will continue to go ahead as before, and will be coordinated by our Wilder Rivers team. 

Blue House Farm Warden, Harry Smith, with the help of our wonderful volunteers, has been upcycling materials to create nesting boxes for breeding shelducks. By re-using old sheep lick buckets and spare twinwall pipe, the team are re-creating nesting habitat. Shelduck will nest in a range of burrows and hollows, such as rabbit burrows, trees and haystacks.

Belfairs volunteers went to Hadleigh Great Wood to remove invasive non-native species. The problem with these species is that they invade habitats, spread quickly and outcompete native vegetation. Some can be destructive, causing riverbanks, built structures and surfaces to destabilise. 

Large clumps of bamboo and patches of rhododendron had been discovered. Some rhododendron shrubs had been cut back a few years ago and treated to prevent regrowth but some are managing to regenerate, albeit slowly. Established specimens can quickly cover large areas of the forest floor adding little value to wildlife and outcompeting our native flora with its thickly interlaced impenetrable branches.

The team were rewarded by beautiful sunshine and blue skies and hearing both the green and great spotted woodpeckers, jays and magpies and seeing an early butterfly in flight - a male brimstone. 

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