Practical conservation
Citizen science surveys are providing an evidence-based approach to the success of our practical conservation approaches throughout the Chess catchment.
Not only have citizen scientists been helping us collect scientific data to monitor water quality and ecology for the Chess Smarter Water Catchment project, we’re using a practical approach to physically improve reaches of the Chess through restoration efforts and have had a good number of volunteers help us with this too.
Restore Hope Latimer
This restoration work, completed in November 2022, was designed to connect two water vole populations up and downstream. We worked to improve sinuousity of the river, increase light levels and in turn, hope that increasing in-channel and marginal vegetation will create habitat for future populations of water voles at Restore Hope Latimer.
Citizen scientists used MoRPh ecological surveys to record pre-restoration physical habitat quality. These MoRPh surveys will now be repeated in the coming months and years to measure success of the restoration work, which we also hope to see in future water vole monitoring survey results!
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