A View From the Field - by Ranger James

It’s a very aquatic theme for my second blog post…

Last week was my first time since starting here to get my feet (waders) wet in the River Ravensbourne that runs through the Eastern side of the park. I was conducting a health and safety check and general condition assessment in advance of some more detailed work. I was really pleased with the condition of the river, while I was there I bumped into a Thames21 volunteer taking some water samples so we shall see how accurate my eye was on the water quality!

A couple of days later I was back in the Ravensbourne with Thames21 and some volunteers for a London Rivers Week clean up. As the river didn’t have much litter we were able to do a really thorough job on it and covered a good two thrids of the stretch. We did hpwever notice a slight discolouration of the water which wasn’t there earlier in the week. This is likely to be a misconnection where someone has mistakenly plummed a ‘grey water’ outlet (washing machince etc) into a storm drain rather then the sewer system, so always check where you waste water is going!
Keep an eye out for the new Thames21 Beckenham Place Park Engagement Officer Catriona, who has been appointed on a 12month contract as part of the East side redevelopment, she will be leading Thames21’s mission to enage the local community with their river!

Earlier this week I was doing more waterbody monitoring but this time in the lake! Swaping the waders for my full dry suit.
This was mostly looking at the habitats in and around the lake as we’ve been asked to do some maintenance, plenty of healthy plants hiding coot and moorhen nests as well as loads of invertibrates scurrying around on the bottom.

Have a great week everyone!