There was a great turn out for the annual conference of the Colne Catchment Action Network (ColneCAN) on Tuesday 21st October at Watersmeet, Rickmansworth.

The day was very well received by the more than 100 attendees. Reflecting the success of last year’s conference, we had made more space and the increased response was a great reflection of everyone’s interest in the River Colne and its many tributaries and resident wildlife.

The theme of this year’s conference - Biodiversity and Nature Recovery in the Colne Catchment & the value of connecting – was chosen firstly to showcase and celebrate the amazing diversity of wildlife and habitats that co-exist within the Colne catchment. Secondly, to highlight a few of the brilliant projects being led by ColneCAN partners to help build our understanding of the growing pressures on Colne biodiversity and to actively help nature to recover and thrive throughout the catchment. And most importantly, to recognise the huge value that arises when we connect and work together to achieve our common goals for a healthy, nature rich River Colne where its many water bodies are able to nurture both wildlife and our local communities.

The Local Nature Recovery Strategies (or LNRS) are part of new policy and resources available to Local Planning Authorities and anyone involved in nature conservation, to improve biodiversity and habitats across England. The Colne is unique in having six different LNRS intersecting the catchment. It is vital to work together to ensure all strategies deliver the nature recovery that the Colne catchment urgently needs. Each presentation was selected to highlight both the strengths of working in partnership, along with a call for action to showcase what each of us can do to support the River Colne, its biodiversity and nature recovery.

The day was organised by Groundwork’s ColneCAN partnership manager Lucy Shuker, with co-host Allen Beechey of Chilterns Chalk Stream Project, and expert input from core steering group partners, Tim Hill (Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust), Stewart Pomeroy (Colne Valley Regional Park), David Harding (Thames Water), Louise Ainsley (Environment Agency) and John Pritchard (Ver Valley Society). Delivery of the event was made possible with many thanks to the great contributions of the ColneCAN task group; also the generous sponsorship by Three Rivers District Council Affinity Water and Thames Water for enabling an excellent venue, delicious catering and comms materials. Special thanks must go to Tony Booker, Sue Seagroatt and the Groundwork South team who brought a wealth of experience from organising last year’s event.

Presentations:  

Our compere for the day was Allen Beechey, ColneCAN co-host and Chiltern Chalk Streams Project lead for 20 years. Lucy and Allen kicked off the day with thanks to everyone for supporting the Colne Catchment Action Network, a brief introduction to the aims of the day and a warm welcome to the talks and afternoon site visits.

In the morning, a fascinating keynote: Beavers, Back (in Britain’s rivers) for Good? was presented by Shaun Leonard, Director of the Wild Trout Trust. First revealing the intricate life cycle and key habitat requirements of trout alongside of the effects of artificial and natural barriers and what we can do to support salmonid survival. Shaun presented the new Beaver Dam Assessment Methodology for Salmonids, a tool for ensuring beaver introduction locations are beneficial to all wildlife, by creating the right habitats in the right places!

Following the keynote, the first twin session: Flooding, droughts & hydro-ecology in a changing climate began with Kate Heppell, Chilterns National Landscape (CNL), presenting the UK-wide Floods and Drought Research Infrastructure (FDRI) project context and vision. This collaborative programme with the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, British Geological Survey, Imperial College London and University of Bristol will be using data from Chilterns chalk streams in the Colne catchment to help achieve aims of building UK resilience to increasing events involving extreme high and low water levels.

Building upon this theme, Charlotte Hawkins, Citizen Science Coordinator and Patrycja Meadows Chalk Rivers Specialist (Hydro-Ecology), Environment Agency (EA) spoke next on Temporary Streams Hydro-Ecology Monitoring and introduced the EA’s Temporary Streams Programme and Flow Detectors citizen science monitoring Project, with an invitation to all to register and get involved and contribute data to help build Colne-wide knowledge of low and high flows! 

After the break..

The second twin session, Upscaling nature recovery: Farming Clusters to LNRS, began with an overview of the achievements and successes of the Chilterns’ Farmer Clusters which include the Chess Valley and Misbourne Valley plus parts of the north and central Chilterns, together covering well over 5000 hectares within the Colne catchment. Benefits to biodiversity arising from rotational paddock grazing and restorative agriculture techniques include increased soil health and drought resilience, reduced erosion and flood risks through improved infiltration.  The challenges of financing good practices were highlighted with low benefits reported via Landscape Recovery, LNRS and Biodiversity Net Gain mechanisms so far, leading to a call to support local farming clusters through buying local produce. Building upon this theme, the next presentation, Upscaling Nature Recovery for Chalk Streams, by Alison Matthews, Chalk Stream Strategy Programme Manager at the Rivers Trust introduced the Chalk Stream Restoration Strategy and ways in which Colne Catchment LNRS measures can work alongside of other initiatives such as Making Space for Water, Landscape Recovery, Chalk Stream Flagship and other Water Company or Defra funded projects.  With no single solution on the table, working together to demonstrate local successes and increase political will for unlocking and enabling greater investment is being championed by the Rivers Trust and encouraged as an essential ‘can do’ for all catchment partners and local river champions across the Colne and nationally.

The third twin session, Development Pressures & Opportunities across the Colne catchment began with brief updates on the ongoing threats to biodiversity in the Colne Valley including the proposed Heathrow Expansion, new IT data centres, increasing residential and infrastructure development presented Stewart Pomeroy (Colne Valley Regional Park, CVRP). Recognising the strategic importance of the Colne catchment green belt alongside of national growth priorities have formed the basis of a new CVRP campaign: Corridor for Life, a 5-point plan to support greener growth that balances development with human needs for sustainable nature based solutions and long term landscape recovery and resilience to support people and wildlife across the Colne catchment.  To achieve these shared goals, the importance of Coordinating EA and ColneCAN partnership Opportunities was emphasised by session co-presenter John Thurlow, Colne EA Catchment Coordinator. Whilst the EA have many activities and duties to balance, they also play a pivotal role in supporting catchment partnerships to deliver actions that help to achieve the objectives of the Water Framework Directive for progressing rivers and all waterbodies towards good ecological health.

Q&A sessions..

With a full agenda and some technical delays, we sadly didn’t have a wealth of time between sessions for Q&As but a few questions were raised with responses by speakers. Notably, Angela Killick (Chorley Wood Residents) wondered whether beavers would be introduced in Herts in the next 10 years? … as yet there are no plans that any of the speakers or we are aware of.  Hopefully when they are, we will be able to ensure their safe and harmonious co-existence with people and all wildlife.

As lunch was fast approaching, to wrap up the morning sessions and enable more time for discussions to flow through the many networking conversations that followed, co-host Allen and Lucy thanked all presenters and Allen reminded everyone that.. ColneCAN, we can .. do just one thing!

Highlighting the exemplary successes of the Chess Smarter Water Catchment, closing suggestions by Allen (and expanded in the slide packs available at the links in this article) were Explore! Volunteer! Find a new species! Help banish an INNS! Join a local river group! Become a river warden! and most importantly, Support chalk stream conservation!

Site visit introductions & instructions:

Before we all broke for lunch, a taster of the afternoon’s site visits included introductions to Rickmansworth Aquadrome including information about an exciting new phase of planning improvements, made possible by Heritage Lottery funding presented by Jo Copley and Jess Hodges (Three Rivers District Council) followed by inspiring insights into the transformational conservation works at Sabey’s Pool shared by Tony Booker (Colne Valley Fisheries Conservation Group). Both presentations resulted in impressive numbers for each site tour, expertly led by their respective guides.

You can download all of the presentations via the links below.

Networking

One of the main aims of the ColneCAN conference is to enable and encourage networking during breaks and the site visits, to build stronger connections across the whole catchment. To help welcome first-timers into conversations, name badges included stickers to indicate members of the ColneCAN Steering Group and the Working Groups for Water Quality and Invasive Species as ColneCAN ambassadors; also the speakers, many of whom brought information to display in the Watersmeet foyer area to provide more information about their projects.

Thank you to all ColneCAN partners who brought displays of their activities driving river-centred nature recovery and the fantastic photographic display of Colne rivers wildlife photographs kindly curated by Tony Booker and Allen Beechey.

As well as the speakers, additional displays were provided by Affinity Water, Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trust and also Royal Windsor and Maidenhead Council who brought along valuable information about Berkshire’s LNRS and how this will be supporting nature recovery in the lower Colne.

Vegetarian Lunch by The Tea Shack at Woodoaks Farm

After the great success of last year’s conference catering, we were delighted to engage The Tea Shack at Woodoaks Farm again to provide this year’s lunch. Their fully vegetarian lunch menu was outstanding and everyone raved about how delicious it was!  We sincerely hope they will be available again next year as we would love to continue supporting such a great local family-run business and Colne-based farm suppliers in the process too.

Afternoon site visits in Rickmansworth

We are indebted to Tony Booker (Colne Valley Fisheries Conservation Group) and Tim Hill (Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust) for planning and delivering memorable tours of Sabey’s Pool and giving us such a detailed on-site commentary.

We would also like to thank the team from Three Rivers Council for showing us the work done so far and their future plans for the Rickmansworth Aquadrome.

Conclusion

The ColneCAN conference is always an inspiring reminder of just how many people care about our fragile catchment and are willing to make time to talk about how we can act together to care for all of its waterways, their habitats and water dependent wildlife more effectively.

Thank you again to our sponsors, Affinity Water, Thames Water and Three Rivers DC for helping to make the conference possible and a great success.

We sincerely hope that everyone attending enjoyed the day as much as we did!  With many new or strengthened connections made, and ideas facilitated for action to improve our cherished river Colne in the year ahead.. we hope that all of the presentations, displays and site visits together helped to spark up inspiration for what we CAN all do to help biodiversity and nature recovery in the Colne catchment.

We look forward to many follow-on conversations, including planning for next year’s conference which will be celebrating Community-led Action for the Colne!

If you would like to get more involved in activities across the River Colne catchment and the Colne Catchment Action Network, please do get in touch – we will be delighted to hear from you and help build and strengthen connections and action across all parts of the catchment!

If you are already involved in community-led or other partnership-project activities, please do keep us posted on your actions to improve the Colne, and its many waterbodies across the catchment!

The Presentations

1. ColneCAN 2025 / Lucy Shuker (Groundwork South)
2. Beavers – back (in British rivers) for good? / Shaun Leonard (Wild Trout Trust)
3. Flooding, droughts & hydro-ecology in a changing climate / Kate Heppell (Chilterns National Landscape)
4. Temporary Streams Hydroecology / Charlotte Hawkins & Patrycja Meadows (Environment Agency)
5. Farmer Clusters and Nature Recovery/ Harriet Bennett (CCSP)
6. Upscaling Nature Recovery for Chalk Streams / Alison Matthews (The Rivers Trust)
7. Development Pressures & Opportunities across the Colne catchment / Stewart Pomeroy (Colne Valley Regional Park)
8. Coordinating EA & Colne partnership opportunities / John Thurlow (Environment Agency)
9. ColneCAN, we can .. do just one thing! / Allen Beechey (CCSP) & Lucy Shuker (Groundwork South)
10. Sabey’s Pool / Tony Booker (Colne Valley Fisheries Conservation Group)
11. Rickmansworth Aquadrome / Jess Hodges (Three Rivers District Council

Do keep in touch with us by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

You can follow us on social media via X @colneCAN or @colnecan.bsky.social and look for updates on our website www.colnecan.org.uk

Together, we CAN make a difference – next year we will be celebrating how we are working together to make this a reality!

• Next