Environment Agency

Our message is loud and clear this year: Plastic and rubbish in our rivers and waterways, is killing animal and plant life in our rivers and oceans. We want to make as many people aware of whats is going on out there! and what we on a local level can do to change that. By encouraging people in fun and engaging ways to do something in their own communities, we can create supportive communities which empowers people to take on issues on a larger scale. We got to start at home! Litter is such a small and insignificant thing, but it holds massive potential to bring people together around a communal issue! as it affects all of us! What we will do: - Public exhibitions, showing "litter-art" and doing fun workshops as part of our "a Waste of Space". These exhibitions take place in local as well as public spaces. By taking art outside the gallery, we reach a much wider audience. - Public engagement art, in the form of performances and sculptures. By working alongside volunteers, we want to clean-up areas and celebrate these clean-ups with creativity! Fancy dress, performance and sculptures made from trash! - Creative workshops for kids, upcycling workshops for everyone! What we need: Volunteers: - We need litter picking groups to get in touch so we can arrange creative litter picking events! - Corporate groups who want to be involved in a day or half day litter pick and we create a fun event around that! - Passionate people who want to be involved in a fun creative revolutionary concept! We are asking for £2,500 Please support our work and be part of something great!

The Festival of Nature will be returning to Bath for another free day of fun celebrating wildlife in the heart of the city. On Sunday 25th June local and national environmental organisations, as well as local authors, poets and artists, will once again be flocking together in the beautiful Parade Gardens to offer an extraordinary showcase of the natural world with interactive exhibitions and inspirational activities. We need help to make this festival bigger and better than ever before. Building on the successes of last year's event we have the opportunity to benefit from the huge amounts of enthusiasm from local environmental organisations, residents and businesses to make this festival the best yet. We intend to encourage visitors to think about the wildlife on their doorstep and inspire them to enjoy the natural world and contribute to the conservation of our environment. From walks and talks to workshops and hands-on activities the Bath Festival of Nature will aim to engage, inspire and entertain visitors, whilst giving local and national environmental organisations a unique platform to showcase their work to the public, recruit members and volunteers, and collect donations to ensure their ongoing success. Find out more at festivalofnature.org.uk

As with many parts of the UK water has become a huge issue in the lives of those living or working in Dorset. Whether it is because there is too much, not enough or it is of poor quality, water management has become a major talking point within communities in Dorset. For those involved in trying to achieve good quality water environment the twin concerns of not enough information and too many mixed messages leave people either disconnected or misinformed. A number of community representatives have already expressed interest in working with DWT to check the health of their river. Monitoring the insects and other invertebrates that live in our rivers and streams is the best way of keeping a check on their ecological health. By training local people, who can sample their local rivers and streams for invertebrates, they will be joining a part of a national scheme called Riverfly. They will play a key role in keeping our watercourses in good ecological condition, which is important for conserving a wonderful range of wildlife. These trained volunteers, take samples at points along each targeted river or its tributaries examining the invertebrates and creating a score based on the abundance of certain types to indicate water quality. The volunteers are providing a long term monitoring service for river health and provide data that will feed in to Environment Agency monitoring and will be on the front line looking forpollution events. They record the invertebrate data in a way that fits with a national database and notify the Environment Agency when warning trigger levels (low Riverfly score)are reached. Volunteers are incredibly important to the project as they are the vital manpower we need to help deliver our habitat projects. They also make a much more rounded project by taking an active role in protecting local rivers and streams – this helps to ensure that their river is looked after in the long term and that the work done is sustainable. Volunteers are the eyes and ears of our catchment. They help to monitor the water quality and report on pollution incidents, as well as helping us keep track on the whereabouts of key species, something thatcouldn’t be done to any great scale without our volunteers. We can’t be everywhere at once, but with a dedicated team of volunteers on the ground, we can get pretty close! Their efforts also encourage interested groups to take action that will help conserve the river environment and help them understand the importance of river water quality, which is the lifeblood of leisure activities such as fishing, and watersports, both of which are big contributors to the local economy.The scheme is of interest to keen anglers and wildlife enthusiasts alike, who both share a concern for the present and future health of our rivers.