Conservation Award
JETSET
Sponsored by Dreamstore
Alan Suttie receives the Award.
To be an angler is to know your stretch of water, to understand the entomology, and very often to take charge of the environment of a particular area. The end of the heavy industrial age has left its scars on our landscape, not least on many of our waterways. Developing from an historical interest in one particular waterway, this group challenged officialdom to take more care in how they used the river as a resource for business needs. More than that, they took matters into their own hands. A group was established to be hands-on in clearing the debris of decades of neglect. Each weekend on selected stretches of the river they gather to grapple, dive and collect skip loads of items as large as motorbikes and metal fabrications to those as small as the ubiquitous plastic bags.
The years of dedication, and the knowledge that it will require years more dedication (just 30-40% complete so far), has its rewards. On occasions as a stretch is cleared of rubbish and the silts move away to reveal the riverbed, the fish move back.
The project has developed into a successful schools programme with web-based information and classroom work on the river and its environment - practical support by kids is only rarely possible on strict health & safety rule bound occasions. And a simple Trout in the Classroom project lets kids see fish grow before release back into the restored river.
The Conservation Award 2004, sponsored by Dreamstore UK was presented to Junior Environmental Taskforce Senior Environmental Taskforce, the Wandle's JETSET.
Go back to the 2004 Awards page