Avon Roach Project: 2013-2014 General Project Update

As most visitors to our site now drop in here to the BLOG first, and as most have already travelled through the main web site, we thought we’d do this short BLOG to point folks back to probably the last annual report we’ll be doing on the main section of the site; the 2013-14 section..... Link below.

http://www.avonroachproject.co.uk/avon-roach-project-roach-2013-14.html

Being the last, we thought we’d cover a full ‘year in the life’ of the project, including some stuff that has already been reported and some that occurs each year, giving a fairly general picture of the project in one hit.

We intend to continue reporting what we are up to through this BLOG which is much easier for us as we can upload information as and when things happen.

We’ve dropped a sample of the pictures below that you’ll see and read about in the report if you decide to have a look.

It brings things almost right up to date as at November 2014, but with much more to come over the winter.

We have just received the all-clear on this years health checks and will be depositing roach into the river at a number of locations, yet to be finally decided, in December 2014 and February 2015.

We’ll be moving the one year olds from the tanks, also in February, to the stews once we have emptied them of adults.

We have our eye on the reinstatement of a small lake at the head of our stews at Bickton, which we are just sorting out the logistics and consents for. In this, we hope to generate a full and healthy, and self-sustaining population of roach through seeding it with various ages and sizes of our own fish. This will then enable us to collect spawn each year and deposit it for hatching directly into the river. We will also be able to net and release a proportion of the adults every few years as they increase their own numbers. With luck and good management, it could turn into our very own little silver mine..... So, fingers crossed.

So, much more to come. Keep watching this space.