Our Greening the banks of the Water of Girvan Project was developed to expand upon the successful green engineering work that was started in 2016. This project will focus on a degraded stretch of the middle catchment which suffers from historic and recent land management issues. With the support of the landowners and funding from Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund, managed by NatureScot, Ayrshire Rivers Trust plan to use green engineering techniques to address large sections of riverbank erosion which will compliment other project activities to re-establish resilient and nature-rich water margins along the Water of Girvan.
Drone footage of the project area taken in January 2023 showing areas of overgrazed riverbanks and riverbank erosion.
In preparation of this work, Ayrshire Rivers Trust have been joined by volunteers to collect and prepare materials for brash bundles. While the materials for these bundles can be sourced locally, and the cost of materials is relatively low, the staff and volunteer time required to create enough bundles for this project is significant. However from previous work, we know this is time well spent and it offers more natural and ecologically sensitive alternative to grey engineering solutions. We will continue to create more brash bundles over the next couple of weeks, and transport all bundles onto site for when the river restoration work starts.
Creating tight bundles of brash is essential to trap sediment and prevent brash material being washed out
Staff and volunteers stacking brash ahead of it being secured into tight bundles.
If you wish to support the Greening the banks of the Water of Girvan project and learn some new skills in the process, please get in touch to find out about our next brash bundling session.
After building over 40 brash bundles the team head home for the day
