The latest newsletter from the Devon Wildlife Trust carries a photo and update on the Upstream Thinking project happening in very special places across the county:
This image captures a brilliant success story on a Devon farm, where the landowner is over the moon to see so many waders thriving on-site! Through the Working Wetlands project, part of the Upstream Thinking work funded by South West Water, our advisors work directly with landowners to improve land management techniques for cleaner water and richer biodiversity.
Following the link to the DWT web page, we learn that their work with South West Water for the third phase will be finishing later this year.
The SWW pages on nature-based solutions focusses on the Upstream Thinking project:
Farmyard manure, artificial fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides used on the land can end up in rivers, wreaking havoc on habitats and the quality of the water. Bad raw-water quality means more intensive and expensive treatment is required to get it to drinking-water standards.
Our multi-award-winning catchment-management scheme, Upstream Thinking, applies natural solutions to reduce this agricultural impact on biodiversity and water quality. It does so whilst supporting farmers and the rural economy, by providing long-term resilience to climate change.
Over the last six months of the project there has been a lot of activity:
The successful pesticide amnesty from SWW helped to protect natural water quality across Devon and Cornwall: farmers were asked to hand in unwanted, outdated or banned chemicals so they could be safely disposed of and to prevent them from accidentally entering the environment.
The new CEO of the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group SouthWest has worked on a wide range of projects including Upstream Thinking with South West Water,
And the updated Wildlife Trusts page on creating working wetlands and delivering ‘Upstream Thinking’ charts how the insect-rich, wet meadows of the Culm Valley lock up carbon and act as natural filters to capture soil particles and other pollutants before they reach rivers and reservoirs, storing store water, releasing it slowly to help mitigate flood risk.
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