Life of a Chalkstream: Give us this day our daily otter

Greetings!

Until very recently I used to tell visiting otter spotters that the chances of a daytime sighting were, at best, remote. Not so any longer.

Over the winter we have had a mother otter and three pups. At that sort of age, four months to a year, it is nigh on impossible to tell the sex of the pups, but it turns out to be two females and a male. How do I know? Well, there comes a point in the life of juvenile otters when the mother forcibly evicts them from the family group, when it is time for them to live life alone. And, as you might expect, it is the males that depart first.

The split is no gradual affair – it is a proper schism and once the young male is gone, he is effectively an enemy of what was his family group, the two competing for territory and food. Being still physically inferior to his mother, and yet to find his truly aggressive nature, the young male will steer well clear of any interactions. So, here at Nether Wallop Mill we now have daytime and night time otter cohorts.

As usual, the mother and two pups appear at night, accompanied by the usual cacophony of eeks and splashing around. But by day we have our juvenile male who, having worked out that our lake belongs to his former family group by night, arrives by day. He now lives upstream of The Mill whilst his former family downstream – never the twain shall meet. He apparently has no fear of people, swimming whilst we fish, sitting on the porch of the fishing cabin or even taking a lunchtime snack from fish we’ve caught left cooling in the stream leading to a memorable tug of war between Mark our instructor on one end of the net and the otter on the other.

Last Sunday was fairly typical as he appeared soon after nine, captured by Angus swimming around the edge of the lake on his morning perambulation. How long this day/night accommodation will continue I have no idea but once the mother casts her female pups asunder I can see a few mighty bust ups between the young otters who were, not so long ago, a playful, cohesive family group.

Our daily otter

Make your own turd poster

Earlier in the week I gave a talk to the Old Basing Parish Council, once, and still in parts, a beautiful village on the banks of the River Loddon, where both the village and the river live in the shadow of the ever increasing urban and commercial sprawl of Basingstoke.

In the Q&A time afterwards the question most asked was what could be done to save the Loddon, a chalkstream that shares the same initial catchment to the River Test before it heads 28 miles north to join the River Thames at Wargrave.

We all agreed that it is becoming increasingly clear that winning the battle against sewage pollution is going to take more than polite lobbying of government. Not many of us were very keen on Extinction Rebellion style direct action, gluing ourselves to sewage outflows or some such, but we do need to explain to as wider an audience as possible how the very thing we should be able to take for granted – clean rivers – is an increasingly distant prospect. Enter the turd poster.

We’ve called it the turd poster because phosphate pollution is often mistaken as such and this particular example was created by river campaigner, and fly fisher, Sue Bramall, to alert those who live in and around Stafford as to the sheer volume of sewage being pumped into her local rivers the Sow and Trent. I spoke to Sue about her mission to inform and she had some useful tips.

The Rivers Trust

Firstly, all the data she displays is available online via theriverstrust.org web site. Just put in your postcode to pull up the river near you. The online map will mark all sewage discharge points in your area with graphics to show the nature, frequency and volume of discharges in 2021. It works for any areas or river catchment in England and Wales.

Armed with that data creating a hard-hitting poster or A4 flyers should be relatively easy. Not included in Sue’s current iteration is the logo of her local water company (Severn Trent) but that’s something you absolutely have to do, writ large. All corporations invest millions into the company logo to make it memorable and visible – use their kryptonite against them so nobody is in any doubt as to who is the culprit.

Finally, how to spread the word? Local newspapers are very alert to this sort of issue; send them a copy or even better stage a group photo with the poster by an offending outlet. Likewise get a copy to any local parish magazines, clubs or societies especially those who might have an interest in the great outdoors. Finally, a bit of fly posting never does any harm especially if you are able to target dog walkers, ramblers or anybody who uses the footpaths that follow the river.

Let’s face it, on the basis of that Wessex Water poster I bought you last week, there is a propaganda war to be fought.

Crumbs from the table

Last week the Environment Agency sent out a press release trumpeting the £3.5m spent on fishery improvements as part of their Fisheries Improvement Programme over the past 12 months, which brings the total to £6m since 2015.

Now, even I, an avowed sceptic of the EA, cannot criticise this work that goes direct to angling communities though I did wonder whether paying for new signage on the salmon and trout fisheries of Devon’s River Lyn really gets to the heart of our problems. And I did also wonder if that is on a national press release, whether the EA might be running out of things to shout about.

The same day I saw the government have found new funding of £200m for cycling. What? Now, I have no beef with cyclists, but I do wonder why we should be so pathetically grateful for our few crumbs that represents just 15% of 2020/21 rod licence income which prompted me to investigate whether we have more roads than rivers. Maybe, proportionately, we are doing as well as we should reasonably expect?

The answer is no – we are being short changed. There are 247,500 miles of roads in the UK and 127,500 miles of river, so essentially half. Should I expect a £100m government cheque for our rivers anytime soon?

Perfect symbiosis?

Weekend Chalkstream School

For many years Alan Middleton ran the very popular one day chalkstream course at Bullington Manor but on his retirement, he pondered whether we should have, in hindsight, made it a weekend thing.

It was a fair ponder. It is a lot to cram into a single day, not to mention the vagaries of trout, the vicissitudes of the weather and the idiosyncrasies of chalkstreams. So it was that Alan has downloaded all his considerable knowledge to Ian, Malcolm and Ray who have already successfully run our first two Weekend Chalkstream Schools at Bullington Manor this season.

The next is coming up on June 25/26 for which we have seven places left. More details here