Regular readers of this blog may recall that we’ve been keenly following the progress of the Ribble Rivers Trust’s HLF-funded URES project (the video above shows just a few aspects of their wide-ranging community engagement and river restoration efforts, and there are regular photo updates on the RRT’s Facebook page).
URES has already proved totally transformative for Burnley’s rivers, and it’s now been selected from more than 750 entries as a finalist for ‘Best Environment Project’ in the 2014 National Lottery Awards – an annual search for the UK’s favourite HLF projects, and a celebration of the massive benefits these projects can bring.
In addition to lots of publicity and recognition for a great cause, each winning project also receives an extra £2,000 of funding to deliver even better results (not to mention a night out for some of the key personnel at a star-studded awards ceremony!). In Burnley’s case, as Vic Woods from URES told us a couple of days ago:
Winning this award will help us to celebrate Burnley’s rich heritage with the nation, raise awareness of issues affecting rivers and show other towns how they can improve their urban rivers too. We really hope people across the North West and throughout the UK will get behind this innovative project and give us their vote.
In order to win ‘Best Environment Project’ and help give urban river restoration a real boost in the eyes of the general public, it’s estimated that URES needs (a slightly staggering) 30,000 votes before midnight on 23 July 2014. Please click here to add your vote right now!
Thanks for the support UrbanTrout!
We have a PhD student carrying out electrofishing surveys to monitor the impact of the URES project. Just found out from him that a section of channel we altered last year to mimic a pool-riffle sequence resulted in a significant increase in trout. Only 5 trout were found there before the works, afterwards there were 56! A heron’s now taken up residence in the town centre.