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Communication is a two-way process, and we particularly welcome suggestions, pictures and brief articles for inclusion in future newsletters - and of course ideas for projects to improve rivers, lakes and wetlands. Ideas and offers of help in fundraising are particularly welcome: the more cash we raise the more we can achieve.

Our latest newsletter

Dear Rivers Trust Supporter,

We are nearing completion of the original Celtic Rivers Trust Partnership (CRTP) project, with significant achievements made on all the objectives on schedule and within budget. Mainly because of achievements to date, we have secured funding for an extension to the CRTP project and are now progressing with the delivery of the project extension into the new Trust areas. This will ensure that the benefits within Pembrokeshire are increased and, equally significantly, that other parts of Wales can take advantage of what we have learned while working with our partners here in Wales and across the Irish Sea.

The Slaney, Ireland’s premier spring-salmon river

I hope that you will enjoy learning more about these and other initiatives that have kept us very busy over the past couple of years. There is a lot more that we could do – wevery much welcome your suggestions and any help that you can offer – and it is thanks to support from our funding and collaborating partners that so much has been done already.

With the sad deaths of Peter Hunt in November 2006 and Prof. Ron Edwards in July of this year we lost two dear friends, invaluable Trustees and great supporters who contributed so much to the early development of the Trust.

In closing this letter, may I ask that, if you could help Pembrokeshire Rivers Trust, please contact Helen Johnston

on 01437 783070 or email helen@pembsrt.org – we really would be most grateful. Finally for now, I must express gratitude to Helen and to our band of hard-working and committed volunteers and subcontractors, all of whom do far more for the Trust than we could reasonably expect of them. A sincere thank you and, yes… more please!

Mark White, Chairman

A key objective of the extension to our EU Interreg III project is to capitalise on the experience gained in setting up Pembrokeshire Rivers Trust and the Slaney River Trust. We are working with the Association of Rivers Trusts and local groups in the South Wales Valleys area, the Teifi Valley and the Clwyd and Conwy catchments to help establish Rivers Trusts in those areas. Meanwhile in Ireland, similar initiatives are ongoing in the Nore and Suir Valleys.

The first fruits of this initiative were celebrated on 24^th March 2007, with the launch of the Teifi Rivers Trust; and then on 7^th September the Clwyd & Conwy Rivers Trust officially came in to being. The new trusts acknowledged invaluable advice, help and encouragement received from PRT – and by the time you read this a Carmarthenshire Rivers Trust is also scheduled to have been launched.

The Porth Hotel in Llandysul was packed out for the launch of the Teifi Rivers Trust in March 2007

The Celtic Rivers Trust Partnership project has seen many exciting achievements made and new initiatives introduced to Pembrokeshire. We are well aware that these achievements would have been impossible had we not received invaluable support and guidance from others. In particular we feel this is an appropriate time to restate our gratitude to our project partners in Wales:

Ø       CHERE, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Ø       Pembrokeshire College

Ø       Environment Agency Wales

Ø       Countryside Council for Wales

Ø       The Welsh Assembly Government and WEFO

Ø       Pembrokeshire Anglers Association

Ø       Llandysul Angling Association

Ø       EU Interreg IIIA support

This has been a joint project, and not only have our Interreg partners in Ireland, led by the Slaney River Trust, worked hard to meet the targets set for the team in Ireland but they have also provided invaluable information, encouragement and help to ensure that we avoid unnecessary duplication and learn from previous experiences in Ireland. In particular, we have benefited greatly from the expertise of the Central Fisheries Board of Ireland and the habitat restoration experience of the Eastern Regional Fisheries Board.

In the first year of the project the emphasis was on consolidating the existing Pembrokeshire Rivers Trust, to enable it to progress efficiently in a sustainable way and to become legally compliant as a company and a charity. The second year of CRTP work was primarily focussed on the initiatives and milestones outlined in the project bid, and it is nice to be able to report that we have been able to complete all of this work either ahead of or on target.

Largely as a result of this project, Pembrokeshire Rivers Trust is now acting as a community focus for encouraging continuing work to maintain, protect and promote the water environment for the benefit of those living in the county, as well as visitors to the area.

Habitat improvement schemes

In partnership with EAW, and supported via the Welsh Assembly Government’s Fishing Wales initiative, we have extended our programme of habitat improvement work, with ten more schemes completed.

New bank-side vegetation, St Cathrines Bridge on the Western Cleddau, July 2005

Improvements have been made to both the Tâf and Nevern rivers and on the Eastern and Western Cleddau where trees have been planted to control erosion. As a result, riverbank habitat has been improved along significant stretches of the main rivers and their tributaries.

PRT’s contractor Habitat Matters Ltd has continued to provide agri-environment services via a grant that formed CCW’s contribution to the CRTP Project. In a previous newsletter we reported that CCW had begun negotiations on 12 schemes; of those, half had been taken through to signing with the other half still under negotiation. Unfortunately due to changes in CCW’s funding availability not all of the schemes have yet progressed to signing.

It is hoped that CCW will secure sufficient funds to enable the rest of the negotiated Living Rivers schemes to be finalised soon. As a result of this funding change the focus of work in this area has been shifted away from the negotiation of Living Rivers schemes and towards production of individual Farm Resource Management Plans (FRMPs). These plans look at the existing management activities on a farm and identify changes that could be made to ensure best practices are employed to achieve both environmental and economic benefits.

As part of Pembrokeshire Fish Week the Trust organises Learn to Fish days each summer. Around 80 people attend these events, and particular interest is always shown by local youngsters. To date the events have taken place at White House Mill Trout Fishery at Lampeter Velfrey, near Whitland, and Holgan Farm Coarse Fishery, at Llawhaden.

A Learn-to-Fish event at Whitehouse Mill

We are most grateful to fishery owners Barbara Hunt and Ian Heaps for their continuing support and for allowing their fisheries to be used for these popular events. Thanks are also due to staff of Environment Agency Wales, the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales, and the qualified angling instructors and helpers who give up their time to provide expert guidance, support and encouragement.

The Trust also helped at fishing events run by partner organisations during Pembrokeshire Fish Week, including a river fishing day, run by Pembrokeshire Anglers Association, for disabled anglers; this event was centred on the fishing platform in Treffgarne Gorge and was attended by 24 people of varying ages and abilities.

In total 170 people were introduced to the sport of angling via PRT-led or assisted events during 2006.

A recent successful Community Chest funding application enabled the Trust to run a Level 1 coaching course for tutors on the subjects of Child Protection and Safety. This application is the first step in a potentially much larger development programme for growing the Trust’s involvement with angling activities. We want to extend the range and number of courses on offer to encompass coarse, game and sea fishing, with the aim of increasing the number of new recruits to the sport, particularly young people.

As part of the CRTP Project, the Autumn 2005 Association of Rivers Trusts seminar was held in Pembrokeshire, hosted by PRT. A year and a half later, our partners in Ireland were the hosts when Rivers Trust representatives from Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland met in Bunclody on the banks of the River Slaney.

CRTP Project Officer Helen Johnston reporting on project achievements at a recent ART Seminar

The theme of the seminar in Wales was Community Partnerships, and delegates exchanged experiences of engaging local communities in the important work of restoring and protecting riparian habitats for the benefit of people and wildlife. For the field trip on the second day of the conference delegates visited several sites on the Western and Eastern Cleddau to look at examples of community projects and aspects of PRT’s work.

In Ireland – appropriately, as the Slaney is Ireland’s premier spring salmon river – the theme of the spring seminar was salmon management challenges. Sea trout topics also featured prominently in the programme, of course.

In 2006 a group of young people from The Slaney Valley visited Pembrokeshire on a Learn-to-Fish programme organised by PRT. Fly casting and fly tying tuition plus guided fishing on river and lake fisheries in Pembrokeshire made the three-day visit both popular and very rewarding.

Young visitors from Ireland receive fly-tying tuition from Lloyd Evans of Pembrokeshire Anglers Association

The work of two key supporters of PRT and the rivers trust movement generally was recognised by the Association of Rivers Trusts. At the 2005 ART seminar, Pat O’Reilly received an award for his ‘outstanding contribution to habitat improvement projects’, and at the 2006 spring seminar in Ireland John Stoner received an award for ‘outstanding contribution by a volunteer.’

PRT is grateful to Pat and to John, who generously donated their awards – totalling £5000 – to Pembrokeshire Rivers Trust to be used to help fund future project work.

CCW has generously grant-aided PRT’s  CASPER (Community Action to Safeguard Pembrokeshire’s Environmental Resources) project, which includes a suite of 20 events ranging from Source-to-Sea educational tours as well as Environment and Fishing days plus skills training and Community Environment days. Capacity Building in the Teifi catchment through the Rivers Trust Movement is another major element of this initiative.

Schoolchildren studying river invertebrates during a recent ‘source-to-sea’ field trip

The Project Officer provided a talk and guided site visit to the habitat scheme demonstration site (St. Catherine’s Bridge) to 30 children aged 7-9 from Croes-goch School. This was part of a source-to-sea visit that had been arranged for the children by the National Park rangers.

Information and activity sheets have been developed to raise awareness of freshwater conservation in Pembrokeshire. In 2005 packs of information containing worksheets produced by officers from all the partner organisations were sent out to Hayscastle Environmental Society, Hayscastle Young Farmers Group, Pembrokeshire College, Tanyard Youth Project, Manorbier Community Council and Nant y Cwm Steiner School. The pilot ran until November 2005, and the information packs are now being made more widely available via an initiative supported by CCW.

Staff from Environment Agency Wales (above) and other partner organisations helped to make the Adopt-a-Riverbank pilot programme a great success

Following positive feedback from the Adopt-a-Riverbank pilot, the materials were revised and new packs with the theme ‘Rivers and their Wildlife’ produced. The new scheme was launched at Goodwick Moor, Fishguard, on 1^st June 2006 when activities from the new pack were tried out by more than 30 members of the public, who all took packs away with them to use on their local rivers. The information packs are available from PRT to anyone upon request.

Training courses in river and habitat improvement were arranged, and in March 2006 young adults from The Avenue Day Centre in Tenby, a learning disability organisation, took part in such a workshop on a farm on the Eastern Cleddau. A second tree planting workshop, held for people with learning disabilities at Llandre Egremont, was attended by participants from the Esteam Project.

At the end of April 2005 brochures and an accompanying letter were mailed out to the Cleddau and Teifi Valley fisheries and angling associations. The letter contained information on the provisional 2004 declared rod catch-and-release rates, from the Environment Agency rod licence returns, and catch and release statistics for salmon and sea trout for the Rivers Tâf, Eastern Cleddau, Western Cleddau and Nevern. It is hoped that this information will help to encourage the conservation of salmonid fish stocks.

Through our work with ART we have received cooperation and examples of best practice from the Association itself and other more established rivers trusts, as well as valuable support from WWF and HSBC Bank. These are partnerships that we hope to build upon in the coming years.

The Trust is continuing to assess options for the development of a ‘Cleddau Trail’ - a series of publicly accessible sites following the Eastern & Western Cleddau Rivers from the source to the sea, to encourage local community access and involvement, as well as improve understanding of the importance of the river systems. Work on the Western Cleddau has identified seven potential sites between the source at Llangloffan Fen and the estuary at Dale, while a similar set of sites on the Eastern Cleddau is also part of the plan for this initiative. A ‘Virtual Trail’ is to be created this autumn and will be launched as a new feature on our website.

The Trust is grateful to the Coastal Zone and Marine Environment Studies students at Pembrokeshire College, who have investigated these sites as part of their course work. They have produced proposals for site themes and design ideas for display boards and information leaflets.

These will be very much linked to available funding, partnership initiatives and PRT capacity. PRT’s involvement in some projects will depend on the wishes of the community, but ideas include:

Eastern Cleddau – opportunities for addressing the issue of rainbow trout escapes, which have been a particular cause of concern on the Eastern Cleddau in recent years

Ø       Eastern Cleddau – opportunities for addressing the issue of rainbow trout escapes, which have been a particular cause of concern on the Eastern Cleddau in recent years

Ø       Further work withPembroke 21C Community Association and the Mill Ponds Action Group

Ø       Delivery of educational resources in schools and with communities

Ø       Other projects devised in partnership with the new Rivers Trusts now set up or about to be set up in other parts of Wales.

I hope you have enjoyed reading our new ‘bigger and better’ newsletter and have gained some insight into the work we do. The Trust has made good progress since its small beginnings at the Pembrokeshire Agricultural Show in 2002 but its continued success depends on the Pembrokeshire community it serves and involving that community will continue to be the foundation of our work. 

Write to, email or telephone:

Pembrokeshire Rivers Trust
c/o Environment Agency Wales, Llys Afon, Hawthorn Rise
Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire SA61 2BQ
Telephone 01437 783070