Reporting pollution or environmental problems

If you’ve spotted pollution or an environmental problem on a waterway, please report it directly to the Environment Agency via GOV.UK or call their 24/7 incident hotline on 0800 80 70 60.

Report an environmental problem
Sign up to newsletter Donate
A group of people wearing orange high vis vests standing on a river bank and looking onto a stream where an instructor holding a net is standing.

An introduction to the ‘wee beasties’ of the river

In our new blog, SERT placement student Eilidh Vass Payne discusses riverfly monitoring and how you can get involved.

The South East Rivers Trust facilitates river stewardship in many ways, helping people connect with and care for their local blue spaces – and the Riverfly Monitoring Initiative (RMI) does just that.

Those who undergo RMI training can become volunteer riverfly monitors, which involves monthly monitoring of the riverflies at their local stretch of river with ongoing support from the South East Rivers Trust.

‘Wee beasties’ or, more officially, riverflies are invertebrates that spend most of their life cycle in a river, pond, stream or lake. Measuring both their diversity and abundance is an excellent way of monitoring river biodiversity and health. When there are big variations in their species diversity and abundance, it indicates a change in water quality. This is usually due to pollution, but could also be because of an excess of silt and sediment, or a change in flow or temperature.

Areas that have regular riverfly monitoring in place are particularly useful for pin-pointing the location of pollution incidents, because in comparison to fish and birds the riverfly live along a very small section of the river.

Rachael explaining how to do a kick sample
Eilidh stood in a river holding a net

Attending an RMI training day

Rachael Edwards was our RMI trainer, and participants included some new volunteers and several new staff members from the South East Rivers Trust. Rachael explained how to risk assess a river site, the data we were going to collect, where the data goes, and how to identify riverfly.

In a nutshell, riverfly monitoring involves getting in the river, taking a kick sample, and then emptying your net into a bucket or tray to identify your findings. We soon learned that there are lots of very important details to consider when identifying riverfly, and that these details are far easier to pick out in a clear photo than they are in the field. I loved learning to identify and count all the wee beasties, and their different ways of moving – wriggling, thrashing, crawling, swimming – were mesmerising!

We were taught to look out for freshwater shrimp, stoneflies, several types of up-wing flies, and caddisflies. On the day we found: cased caddisfly, freshwater shrimp and mayfly nymphs.

Rachael led an extremely informative RMI training day. It was a lovely reminder that there is so much life that lives in and around our rivers, and even though the fish, birds and plants are larger and more visible, there are plenty of unsung heroes helping our rivers thrive. By the end of the day, volunteers were motivated and prepared to return to their local patch and get involved in the monthly monitoring.

If you too would like to get involved in riverfly monitoring and be part of citizen science that provides critical evidence for recording the health of our rivers, I would massively recommend the RMI training day as both a brilliant day out and a very enjoyable introduction to a long-term river-based volunteering opportunity!

Become a riverfly monitoring volunteer

Take part in monitoring programmes such as RMI and help collect valuable data that identifies pollution and guides action to improve river health.

Find out more
Two volunteers in the river, holding a net and looking into the net for insects