Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF): the trust is working in partnership with the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority to manage a CSF in Raydale, a sub catchment of upper Wensleydale and with matural England, Nidderdale AONB and Yorkshire water to manage a similar CSF shceme in Nidderdale. These innovative catchment scale schemes aim is to encourage farming methods that reduce diffuse pollution of nutrinets, pesticides and sediemnt to water courses. This will be carried out through working with farmers, encouraging uptake of Natural Englands stewardship schemes, providing a small capital grants scheme to improve land management and rainsing awareness of conservation issues.
Yorkshire Peat Partnership: this scheme is being managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust in conjunction with Natural England, Environment Agency, North Yorks Moors national park Authority, Yorkshire dales national park Authority, Nidderdale AONB, National Trust, Pennine Prospects, Moors for the Future and the trust. The partnership is mapping upland drainage channels (grips) and bare peat using remote sensing and surveying large tracts of moorland in order to identify where grip blocking and peat restoration measures are required. It is expected that once the restoration is complete that the moorland will settle into a fully functioning upland system with peat deposition and improved water storage and flows. Research suggests that this may take a number of years after work is complete but the consensus is that this will improve catchment processes and therefore river quality.
Raydale Project: the Carnegie Trust offered the trust £18,000 to develop a community led project with the aim of manageing raydale to buffer against future effects of climate change. Deborah Millward has managed the project from inception and is now putting land management measures in place. These include gill planting with native trees, buffer strips alongside river banks and contour planting to reduce sediment inputs into the stream netowrk. A scoping study has been carried out to look into opportunities for hydropower generation. It is expected that this will pull in a stream of annual funds to be managed by a new charity that will form out of the Raydale project. The project has managed to pull in further funding from a number of sources and has been integral in the development of the Catchment Sensitive Farming Scheme which has recently begun.
Catchment modelling: a PhD project has been develpoed by the trust with help from the Yorkshire Dales Millenium Trust, the Salmon and Trout aAssciation, the Yorkshire Dales National park Authority and the Environment Agency. The project has caried out a number of ecological and environmental surveys to look at brown trout (Salmo trutta) populations, macroinvertebrate communites. These have been coupled with computer modelling using SCIMAP (www.scimap .org.uk) to assess fine sediment delivery.
Ripon Multi Objective Pilot project (MOP): the trust has had some input into the Ripon MOP scheme. Following a national selection procedure, the Laver and Skell catchments, west of Ripon, North Yorkshire, were chosen for a national multi-objective pilot project. Together these constituted a reasonable size catchment area (approximately 140 sq km) with mainly arable agriculture in the lower reaches, pasture in the middle and heather moor in the headwaters. The aim of the project was to investigate the potential for delivering flood risk management through land use and land management changes at a catchment scale while also pursuing resource protection, biodiversity and access opportunities. The pilot project published a series of outputs in June 2007see, (www.defra.gov.uk/Environ/fcd/adaptationandresilience/wetlands/riponmop.htm).
Educational DVD: the trust is developing a DVD package for A level students following Geography, Science and Biology courses. With help from the Yorkshire Dales Millenium Trust this project has now passed the development stage and filming has begun. It is expected that the DVD will be delivered in October 2010 and will be offered as a free resource in schools throughout Yorkshire.
