Helping people understand the unique features of the river and the importance of protecting it is a key part of the River Allen Landscape Recovery Project, so you’ll often find the team out and about engaging with the local community.
As part of this work Sadie and Bronwen joined popular local events, the Wimborne Green Festival and the Dorset Bird Club conference, to deliver presentations.
With an audience of over 200 people at the Dorset Bird Club conference and a sold-out event at Wimborne Green Festival, the team brought the River Allen to life, highlighting that:
- Chalk streams are a rare and rich ecosystem, with fewer than 250 in the world, and 85% of the world’s streams found right here in England
- The river supports unique biodiversity, including plant species such as the wonderfully named starwort, crowfoot, yellow flag iris and water mint. These provide habitat for mayfly, damselfly and endemic winterbourne stonefly; brown trout, grayling, brook lamprey, and chalkstream salmon; kingfisher, swan, wagtail and dippers; otter, water vole and Daubenton’s bat
- The ambition of the River Allen Landscape Recovery Project is to secure DEFRA funding for long term investment to restore habitats, naturalise the water flow, revive biodiversity and improve water quality
Feedback and discussions after the talks was overwhelmingly positive and many members of the audience were interested in supporting / volunteering with the project. If you would like to be kept up-to-date with the latest news and events or volunteer, please sign up using the link below. We look forward to meeting you!
