CHARITY
Water, Water EVERYWHERE The award-winning charity, The Ouse and Adur Rivers Trust, protect and restore the catchment area along these two great rivers, as Ruth Lawrence discovered recently, in conversation with charity director, Peter King
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f someone asked you to estimate the length of the River Ouse, what would your answer be? Maybe 35 miles perhaps, roughly the distance from its source in Slaugham to its union with the sea at Newhaven. The Ouse actually consists of 750 miles of streams, rivers and brooks, spreading across the landscape like the trunk, branches and twigs of a tree. The neighbouring River Adur has a catchment area of 500 square kilometres and reaches out across the landscape in a similar manner. Both
director, Peter King, explained to me are an important spawning ground how the charity aims to encourage a for sea trout, and both are utilised richly diverse riparian environment for coarse angling. The Victorians, with the aim to benefit wildlife and ever keen to impose their plans on people, while creating resilience the landscape straightened and against drought and flooding. deepened the rivers, adding Although this sounds weirs, locks, flood like a titanic job, prevention measures, considering the and sections of modest size of stillwater along the Trust, Peter their length. applauds the efforts If you’ve of volunteers who walked, swam, have played a fished or paddled crucial role in along these rivers, practical work you’ll appreciate and citizen science how much of their projects. course has been Trust members modified in the past. can take on a task The Ouse and Adur or a variety of tasks Rivers Trust is the body during the week tasked with restoring and and at weekends or improving many of those The charity aims to concentrate on the Victorian innovations and encourage a richly regular monthly creating connectivity more diverse riparian practical sessions on akin to the natural flow of these two rivers. Trust environment
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