Your views sought on how to help create and maintain healthy Yorkshire rivers

A network which is striving to protect the health of rivers in North Yorkshire is asking for the public’s help in setting the future priorities and projects that are needed along seven watercourses and across their respective catchments.

The Dales to Vale River Network (DVRN), a partnership of organisations, interest groups, farmers and charities hosted by the Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust, is setting its future strategy and is keen to hear what people consider are the priority issues along the catchments of the rivers Nidd, Ouse, Wharfe, Swale, Ure, Wiske and Foss.

To help, the DVRN has created a Catchment Management Aspirations Pack with background information on the network and each of the rivers, including the river’s characteristics, species of interest, issues identified in previous consultations and the existing list of top priority projects. There is then a link to a questionnaire for each of the river catchments that people can fill in online.

Charlotte Simons, senior catchment partnerships manager for the DVRN explains: “We’re keen to hear how people see the rivers, what issues they are concerned about and what improvements they would like to see within the seven catchment areas.  We will use their information to form the priorities for action along each river.  We want to have a strategic approach to projects that delivers benefits to the public, the rivers, and the ecosystems that depend on these watercourses.

“The network represents a broad spectrum of interests and organisations that share the vision of making our rivers more resilient and a belief that by working together rather than independently we can achieve so much more. Each summary sheet includes existing project priorities such as pollution, flood management and habitat restoration but the input of the general public is vital as their knowledge of a particular river helps us identify new, as well as existing, issues and form the projects that are needed to address them.”

Anybody interested in contributing their views has until 8^th September to fill in the questionnaire. For more information including links to the individual river questionnaires go to Aspirations - Dales to Vale Rivers Network (dvrn.org.uk)