More Doon Water Margin Improvements

by | Jun 18, 2015 | Conservation

After years of complaints about cattle accessing the River Doon at Holms Farm, with financial assistance from the River Doon DSFB and more than a little input from SEPA and the Trust, we managed to secure agreements to fence off two fields creating good buffer strips...

Farmed Salmon Escape

by | Jun 11, 2015 | Conservation, fishing, General

Last week, 16000 farmed salmon, each of around 10lbs in weight (4.5kg) escaped from a sea cage into the Kilbrannan Sound between Arran and the Mull of Kintyre. These fish may end up in Ayrshire’s rivers and the last thing we need is them breeding with our wild...

Catrine Dam today

by | Jun 3, 2015 | Conservation

We headed to Catrine Dam this morning to have a look at the levels following our visit last night. At 6.00pm yesterday, the entrance to the fish pass was obliterated by the flow over the dam back thundering into the entrance to the fish pass. Water levels last night...

Diffuse pollution

by | Jun 3, 2015 | Conservation, General

Again on the Ayr, we visited the Dippol Burn near Ochiltree to see what condition the habitat was in. Previously this burn’s fish population has been surveyed by ART and never a trout was found over several years although pollution tolerant species such as Stone...

Temperature data loggers

by | May 27, 2015 | Conservation, General

Nearly one year on from when we installed temperature data loggers across the river Ayr catchment to assess long term changes in water temperatures driven by Global Warming, we returned today to download the data. Unfortunately the rain was pelting down and this...