Blog

Hidden under the surface of our rivers is a microscopic world of beautiful and alien creatures.  Most of these animals are the larval form of mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies who spend most of their lives feeding and growing under the water before hatching as...

About this time every year thousands of tiny buds erupt all around us as we carry on with our daily lives.  On a particularly sunny morning we may even notice the stark brightness of green springing out from what seems like everywhere, making those mundane Monday and...

Citizen science into action. I was fortunate to be able to join a team of avid local river volunteers. We were all taking part in training how to monitor fresh water as part of the fresh water watch project. This is a global project generating data on the quality of...

(The ante has certainly been upped!). A big thank you to Szymon, biologist, forager and educator in wild plants for his fantastic foraging guided walk. Not only did we get to walk in the lovely Almondell and Calderwood country park, we also got to learn to identify...

With bin bags and litter pickers in hand, David and I met with 5 volunteers by Bathgate’s Bog burn yesterday.  We had a refreshing mix of volunteers – including enthusiastic members of the community, community council members, an angler and a local councillor. The...

You might have heard us mention a few times about our Craigshill volunteers. These guys are our group of a few dedicated volunteers who have signed on to the idea of regular monthly volunteering in their local area. This was formed through a partnership with...

I marvel at how resilient nature is at times. This has recently been demonstrated a few times by some of the invertebrates on the river Almond system. Iain has been out and about on both the Almond and Avon recently doing the ecological surveying for the RiverLife...

As the environmental larger works happen in the mid and lower catchment of the Almond, we tend to spend more time around these parts and less up in the upper catchment. We’re trying to do things a bit different and have the second round of our RiverRubbish project up...

I grew up living next to an urban burn in Portobello in Edinburgh. When I was a boy I used to marvel at the trout gently breaking the surface of the water to gulp insects or sometimes leaping out of the water completely to catch one mid-flight. Watching these amazing...

Last weekend (24 March) Forth Rivers Trust’s Assistant led a guided walk at Muiravonside Country Park, where we met with around 10 participants at the car park where we started the walk. The first thing we talked about was the river Avon, its source at Fannyside Loch...

The FISH IN THE CLASS project ran over the last 8 weeks, 400+ pupils at 14 schools spread throughout the Forth River catchment have been hatching brown trout eggs and rearing the young fish to the fry stage. The successfully reared trout fry were now ready for release...

The West Lothian Litter Pickers have been awarded an 'Action on the Ground' grant which will help them continue with their excellent work.  They said: The West Lothian Litter Pickers will be delighted to have been successful in the Grant application.  We will be...

On Sunday, the inconvenience of losing an hour to the changing clock was instantly balanced out by the warming of the bright spring sun.  The drive up the single track road in the heart of the Pentlands was reduced to a crawl as I dodged dogs, prams and anglers - all...

It has long been established that those who have direct access and the ability to conserve the river, are able to impact the amount of invasive non-native species that are found on their banks. The various Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland have been monitoring...

Howden weir partnership community contribution Thank you to our partners, AmcoGiffen for their contribution to the local community. A wide range of equipment was procured through their trusted supplier Safeaid LLP, which included personal protection equipment, from...

With the weather being so changeable we haven't managed to get our ducks out racing yet! We had our fingers and toes crossed for good weather but alas, the River Almond was too high to send the ducks out swimming. Instead, we had a bunch of trees to plant for the...

A few of the team popped along today to the wonderfully accommodating Almondell & Calderwood Country Park, who having shared their river pollution issues with us a while back, are now in receipt of Annie Lord's new artwork. Made up of a selection of a few of the...

We are Minty Donald and Nick Millar, two public artists based in Glasgow. We are excited to be starting work on a new project - ‘Our’ Falls - in Polbeth, West Lothian. The ‘Our’ Falls project hinges around Limefield Falls and the construction of a viewing platform and...

Back in Autumn last year we met up with a few old faces to chat about invasive plants along the rivers Almond and Avon. See the newly released video about some of the work, motivation and importance of this type of work. A big thank you to all those who gave their...

There are three sites on the river Almond, within Almondell country park, where the river bank and path are badly eroded by foot- and paw-fall.  To find a solution to this problem, the Friends of Almondell and Calderwood Country Park approached the RiverLife team and...

In mid January the P4 / 5 classes at each of the schools received a1 hour session learning about the life cycle of Brown trout and Salmon. The session also covered habitat requirements, predation, pollution and bio- diversity. There was no doubt that the students were...

The River Almond has areas of great beauty but it also has a lot of unpleasant aspects, not the least the amount of sewage works that release water and occasionally other materials into the river. Kirsty, one of the rangers for West Lothian Council, told us of times...

The RiverLife River Table made an appearance at the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers National Conference on the 27th of October. Amy and Jonathan went along to impart some Dynamic Rivers wisdom to the teachers (and let them have a shot on the River Table!)....

Our RiverRubbish project has been rolling along well, this is the first time we have run volunteer and public events specifically around the issue of litter and sewage in our rivers. This season’s project has been based at the Almondell and Calderwood Country Park, a...

RiverLife have teamed up with Eadha Enterprises, a social enterprise focusing on rare native trees, to deliver an aspen project based in the Almond and Avon catchments.  Aspen supports more biodiversity than any other native tree and, while it is widespread across the...