|
2002 ANNUAL REPORT & ACCOUNTS
Introduction
2002 was another busy year for the Foundation. The Trustees have continued to promote sound policies that encourage good practice for Tweed through the Foundation’s Fisheries Management Plan. We continue our work to maximise juvenile production through improvements to the river and to monitor and survey both the fish stocks and their habitat. A thorough working knowledge of the resource is the only way in which we can promote lasting and effective improvements. This has been achieved by creating good partnerships with a wide variety of organisations and stakeholders. We will continue to build and develop these relationships for the best advantage of the river. Education is a key element of our work and during the year we continued to arrange seminars and instructive meetings to further understanding of interested groups locally, nationally and indeed internationally. The pinnacle of this was the second major Tweed Conference, hosted by the Foundation in May, which was judged to be a great success by all who attended.
In March 2003 Judith Nicol, Director of the Tweed Foundation, (and Clerk to the River Tweed Commissioners)left us after nine years. Judith was the first full-time Director of the Foundation and her energy and enthusiasm for the job has been immense. She was the driving force in securing major funding for our habitat projects, firstly from the European Union and latterly instrumental in setting up the Heritage Lottery Bid which secured funding not only for the Foundation but for many other agencies and groups in the Tweed catchment. Not only has she been a superb ambassador for the Foundation, she has had a huge impact in fisheries politics – ensuring that Tweed views and needs are in the forefront of the minds of all those in the Scottish Executive – from responding to a threat to our Trout interests via the Protection Order, to ensuring legislation to protect fish achieves the recognition by the Executive that it deserves (for example, the worm ban on Tweed), setting up our Catch and Release scheme and, most recently and currently, working to bring about an end to the North East Drift Net Fishery and running the campaign to prevent a smolt farm being developed on the Ettrick. I cannot thank Judith enough for the outstanding contribution she has made to the Tweed Foundation.
 |
Judith’s successor is Nick Yonge who takes up his position on April 1st 2003 . Nick lives near Kelso and has been manager of Galahaugh Fish Farm at Torwoodlee for the last 25 years. During that time he has been Convenor of the NFUS Fish Farming Committee and sat on its Council; has been Chairman of the UK Trout Farmers Association representing aquaculture in the UK and Brussels and has been the British representative of the European Fish Farmers’ Federation. Nick was Vice Chairman of the Tweed River Purification Board until it was superceded by SEPA. As well as being an RTC Committee member and a Trustee of the Tweed Foundation since 1988, Nick also chaired the Foundation’s Technical Advisory Group. Nick is most ably qualified to succeed Judith and we wish him well as he settles into his new role.
Much of the success of the Foundation’s habitat programme over the last 7 years has been attributable to Duncan Glen, the Foundation’s Habitat Manager. Sadly Duncan left the Foundation last October to take up the post of Conservation Officer at the Ministry of Defence’s Training Range at Otterburn. He will be a real loss to the river; his contribution has been enormous – not only in delivering the habitat improvements but also in representing the river’s interests with the agricultural and forestry sectors and many other groups and agencies that are involved in the life of the river. Philip Kearney, the Habitat Assistant, also left us at the end of September when his contract, to complete Phase 1 of the Heritage Lottery funded habitat project, came to an end. Philip has secured a post with Central Scotland Forest Trust. Our thanks and best wishes go to both of them.
The Foundation has appointed four new Trustees to its Board during 2002. These appointments bring us additional expertise and experience. Dr Richard Shelton, formerly head of Fisheries Research Services at Pitlochry, and Mr Ian Currie, formerly head of the Galashiels SEPA office, agreed to join us as Trustees having served for many years on the Technical Advisory Group. Mr John Scott of Hollybush, Galashiels and Mr Andrew Douglas-Home, owner of The Lees fishery, also join the Board.
I would like to thank my fellow Trustees and our hardworking staff for their enormous contribution. We are a small organisation that does not always have all the resource that it needs.
J H Lovett (Chairman)
Riparian Habitats Project
The end of 2002 saw the completion of all physical works associated with Phase 1 of the Riparian Habitats Project – part of the larger catchment-wide Tweed Rivers Heritage Project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Over the last three years of the Project, the Foundation completed works on the Upper Tweed, Ettrick and Yarrow, Leader, Whiteadder, Breamish and Till rivers comprising fencing, planting, instream works, obstacle removal and fish pass installation. (Further details can be found in Annex A). Some of the work has been undertaken solely by the Foundation, whilst a lot of projects have been in partnership with other agencies – including local Angling Associations, landowners, the Environment Agency, Scottish Water and local Councils. It has been a tremendous achievement benefiting many areas of riverine habitat within the catchment.
In May the Heritage Lottery Fund approved a further round of funding for the Tweed Rivers Heritage Project which will allow the Foundation to continue with its programme of habitat works until mid 2005. Phase 2, which got underway in July, will include fencing and planting works as well as further educational and interpretation projects. Over the next 3 years the Foundation will be spending around £165,000 on further habitat works which will again attract a 50% grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The first project has already been completed on the Douglas Burn where bank protection work has been undertaken on this important tributary of the Yarrow. Before the end of the year a fencing and planting project was underway at Caverton Mill on the Kale Water, a tributary of the Teviot.
During the autumn, projects were completed to provide access to the upper reaches of the Eye Water, with alterations to Reston Cauld, and to the Slitrig Water in Hawick where alterations to a rock shelf allow salmon passage upstream. Following these successful breaches all the principal salmon spawning areas in the catchment are now fully open for the first time in 190 years. Having tackled practically all the obstacles to migrating salmon and trout in the larger channels, attention will now turn to the smaller streams only used by trout.
Proposed Salmon Farm on The River Ettrick
Plans to develop a smolt farm on the River Ettrick were still being progressed by Lighthouse of Scotland Limited during 2002, the UK subsidiary of the Pan Fish Corporation. This development is totally contrary to the remit of both the River Tweed Commissioners and the Tweed Foundation to protect and enhance fish stocks on the River Tweed. The fish farming industry has an extremely poor track record of containing their domesticated fish; escape-proof fish farms do not exist. To build such a production unit in the engine room of Tweed, one of the last remaining prolific and entirely wild Atlantic Salmon rivers, is totally inappropriate and should not be permitted. Tweed has been designated a Special Area of Conservation, the purpose of which is to protect the river and its wild salmon from potentially damaging operations, of which this is clearly one. We are therefore looking to the Government and it’s regulatory agencies to ensure that the legislation provides the Tweed with the required degree of protection.
Tweed Into The 21st Century Conference
29th – 31st May 2002
‘Tweed Into The 21st Century’ was held at The Dryburgh Abbey Hotel at the end of May. The Conference comprised two days of seminars, with presentations from all agencies with a stake in the well-being of the river, and a day of field trips. The whole event was most successful and followed on from the ‘Tweed Towards 2000’ seminar held by the Foundation in 1989. Intended not only as a review of where we have got to, the seminars focussed on how best the Tweed can be served will into the millennium.
One of the challenges for 2003 will be to disseminate all the information which was supplied at the Conference and produce formats for wider distribution.
Habitat Surveying & Monitoring Work
The survey and monitoring programme during the summer concentrated on the Whiteadder, Eye Water and Ettrick and Yarrow systems and it was during the monitoring work that salmon fry were discovered for the first time in the top reaches of the upper Blackadder Water, the main tributary of the Whiteadder.
GIS Report
A new GIS (Geographical Information System) was purchased at the end of the year with the assistance of a grant from Scottish Natural Heritage. The Foundation uses its GIS for mapping habitat survey and monitoring sites throughout the catchment. All survey data – both from scientific stock monitoring and habitat enhancement site monitoring is fed into the model allowing a comprehensive bank of data to be built up regarding, for example, stock density distributions, obstructions to fish passage and stock movements. Information collected allows current work plans to be considered and amended and future management plans to be formulated.
The new system was purchased to dovetail with the systems in place within other organisations allowing data to be disseminated in the wider scientific community. For example, the Tweed Foundation is a major participant in the Scottish Fisheries Co-Ordination Centre (SFCC) and projects are currently being developed to share GIS type information with other fisheries trusts within the SFCC network. The ArcView GIS system which the Foundation has bought is now the most commonly used package and, together with an updated pc computer to run the software, will enable the Foundation to expand its use of a GIS for its own project activities as well as interaction with others, including SNH.
The new system has already been used to provide SNH with presence and absence lists for juvenile Salmon which have been used to guide SNH in their Special Area of Conservation (SAC) designation of Tweed’s major tributaries.
Ettrick Fish Counter
A new grant from Scottish Natural Heritage, matched by funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, allowed us to put mains electricity into the fish counter on the Ettrick during the autumn. This will reduce both the demands on manpower and the cost of running the counter on batteries, and allow us to install an underwater camera permanently in the fish pass, to check the accuracy of the counter and to run educational open days and visits to the site.
Fish Rescues
During August Foundation staff, in a joint exercise with the Bailiffs of the River Tweed Commissioners, carried out three major fish rescues where the new dual carriageway on the A1 was to cross the Eye Water at Houndwood. Staff electric-fished the sections capturing many hundreds of small salmon and trout which were then transferred to a large oxygenated tank on a trailer and transported 2 – 3 miles downstream of the roadworks before being released.
The Tweed Foundation and River Tweed Commissioners have always worked together and, increasingly, the level of this cooperation has shifted up a gear with the Bailiffs now undertaking routine inspections of the Foundation’s habitat works and reporting defects to be rectified. The Bailiffs continue to help the Foundation with its electric fishing monitoring work throughout the summer months.
Scientific Partnership Projects
The Environment Agency (EA) and English Nature (EN) secured a grant to carry out a range of projects on the River Till looking at geomorphology, water quality and quantity, species presence, etc. which will provide much of the information required for the Special Area of Conservation (SAC) designation.
The Environment Agency contracted the Foundation to carry out an electric-fishing survey of the Till to establish the distribution of lampreys on the river. Fieldwork has completed and a report prepared and submitted to the EA. Lampreys were found at practically all the sites that were surveyed, with sites showing abundant populations.
During 2002, the Foundation was also commissioned to produce a survey of Trout breeding in burns upstream and downstream of the Meggat Reservoir for a project which Scottish Water were carrying out.
Further collaboration was undertaken, along with other Scottish fisheries trusts, and in conjunction with the Scottish Fisheries Co-Ordination Centre (SFCC), to provide survey data from river catchments to SEPA which requires fisheries information to help fulfill its obligations under the new Water Framework Directive legislation. Both the individual trusts and the SFCC will benefit financially from this collaboration in providing essential information which is not currently held in any other form by a national body.
Wild Trout Trust
The Wild Trout Trust have been tremendous supporters of the Foundation’s habitat works in recent years. Their financial contribution, of £3,000 per year, towards Phase 1 of our Riparian Habitats Project (part of the Tweed Rivers Heritage Project), plus their invaluable technical advice has allowed us to develop a number of projects with the local angling associations. As a result, the Trust were keen for us to enter the project that we carried out on the Leet, with the Coldstream & District Angling Association, for the Trust’s annual Conservation Award.
The fencing and planting carried out by the Association on the Leet, which is an important nursery stream for trout in the area, has resulted in impressive improvements in the bankside vegetation and the stream’s structure in a surprisingly short space of time. The project was selected as a finalist at this year’s Conservation Awards and representatives of the Coldstream & District Angling Association were presented with a certificate, as runner-up in the “partnership” category, at the Trust’s Award Dinner near Edinburgh in September. It is good to see the importance and work of the Association recognised in this way. We are most grateful for the Wild Trout Trust’s continuing support for Phase 2 of the Riparian Habitats Project.
Catch Records Project Overview
By early spring, all the monthly catches relating to the Berwick Salmon Fisheries Company held by the Berwick upon Tweed Records Office had been collected. The data for individual fisheries within that record were organised according to their geographical position and the type of gear employed (fixed engine or net & cobble).
By the end of the year all of the required records of the Upper Tweed had been collected and the data stored. Only two more sets of fisheries records were required from the middle river to complete it. The lower river data set was almost complete, with only one more full fishery being sought.
During October, a meeting was held with representatives from the River Spey and River Dee fishery boards to discuss access to fishing records from those rivers. In short, both Boards were agreeable to supplying data from a few rod & line fisheries. The River Thurso had also agreed to supply data. The collection of the data will begin in the Spring of 2003. The netting records for the Dee and Spey have also been sought and collection is to be arranged.
The collection of marine and freshwater climate data for the Tweed catchment from the British Atmospheric Data Centre took place throughout 2002 and has now been completed. All the data sets have been organised and placed into a database ready for analysis. Some indices of plankton abundance had also been made accessible to the catch records project by the Sir Alistair Hardy Foundation.
Acknowledgements
The Trustees would like to thank all our members, Patrons, Benefactors and the River Proprietors and Angling Associations for their invaluable support and commitment. Without their vital backing and financial support we would not be able to achieve all that we do. We are also deeply indebted to all those who have provided new or additional financial support for the Habitat Enhancement programmes and other aspects of our work; in particular, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Whitley Animal Protection Trust, Scottish Natural Heritage, WWF Scotland, the Wild Trout Trust, the local Angling Associations, landowners and many private individuals
The Tweed Foundation’s Habitat Enhancement Work is part-financed by:
|
Heritage Lottery Fund
|
|
|
The European Community - European Agriculture Guidance and Guarantee Fund
|
|
|
Scottish Natural Heritage
|
|
|
WWF Scotland
|
|
|
River Tweed Commissioners
|
|
|
|
