Winter volunteer week: January 20th-January 26th 2020
Our winter volunteer week kicked off with some improvement works at Swallow Street woodland on the Monday. Litter picking, tree work and path clearance was all completed that morning showing what is possible with a few hours of hard work.
Wednesday 22nd and Saturday 25th saw River Walk surveys run by Chloe from our Rivers team. Volunteers completed river walk surveys along River Colne in Denham country Park and River Frays at Rockingham Recreational Ground where they were given tips on how to spot issues and problems with the river. This included signs of pollution, invasive species and advise on what to do if you found evidence of any of these.
On Thursday the River Ranger workshop ‘Walk and talk our rivers’ was hosted at Rickmansworth Waterways Trust Education Centre. This was a fabulous workshop where together we delved deeper into how our water is managed and took an in depth look at the how the waters of the Colne Valley are connected.
Alister and Mel from Affinity Water introduced the complicated Colne Catchment and shared their knowledge and expertise of catchment, including the geology found here, water quality, river restoration, catchment management approach, threats that our local river face today and much more. Following this Josh from Hertfordshire and Middlesex Wildlife Trust’s lead a guided walk at Stockers Lake sharing his wealth of information about lakes history, diversity of wildlife and showcasing the great partnership work with Affinity Water.
On Friday 24th, Russell Ball, an experienced consulting arborist and founder of the charity Fund4Trees came to run a workshop on tree management at Denham Country Park on Friday 24th January. A classroom session in which we dispelled some of the common myths around tree management was followed by a walk around the site looking at real world examples. 17 people attended and everyone was really engaged throughout.
Thank you to everyone who came along to our events during volunteer week. We hope to run another successful week of events for national volunteer week in June.
