CatchmentCARE Blackwater staff have been working in partnership with DAERA inland fisheries to help deliver in-stream improvements to compliment the Ballygawley Phase 1 river works. Works being carried out include bank stabilisation using tree stems and coir matting back filled with cobble stone, installation of 3.5 km of fencing, placing of 17 livestock drinkers and

            Three community projects were funded in the Finn Catchment as part of Phase 1 of the Community Incentive Scheme, these being ‘The Finn through the lens’, ‘Coiste Slí Taobh an Mhuillinn’ (Millside Walk) and ‘The Finn Anti-Pollution Project’, also known as FinnAPP. One of these, the Finn Anti-Pollution Project,

            One of the Blackwater Catchment’s recently completed CIS projects in Armagh has come in for special thanks from the club’s Chairman. The Armagh Anglers was funded by the CIS to carry out improvement works at Lowry’s Lake in Armagh. The work entailed providing safe access around the lake for

            A key success of CatchmentCARE has been the schools engagement work being delivered by educators from the River Backwater Catchment Trust. In 2020 plans were set in place to build on the success of the 2019 pilot education programme and encourage the 8 schools that participated in the pilot

            Water quality improvement works have been progressing well in recent months in the Blackwater Catchment thanks to ABC staff who has been working hard to develop and deliver Riparian and In-Stream works around the Ballygawley area of the Catchment. Ballygawley Phase 1 is a joint project with DAERA Inland

          Farmyards are a potential source of phosphorus which, if not managed correctly, can be lost to watercourses and contribute to eutrophication. In a new scientific paper from the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) the runoff, management, and infrastructure factors that control phosphorus risk were ranked by 147 experts from the

          As part of AFBI’s Farm Nutrient Management work, four hundred fields in the Blackwater catchment were soil sampled in early 2019. Regular soil sampling (once every 4-5 years) is extremely important in order to increase the efficiency of nutrient management on farms and improve soil health. Along with optimising grass

            The groundwater team has been busy trying to find dykes, which are walls of molten rock that squeeze up through cracks in the earth’s crust. A dyke’s size can vary from only a metre or so up to 10’s of metres wide. In 2005, the Tellus project found that

          As instream/riparian works are beginning to take place in all three catchments, it may be useful to highlight some of the measures being implemented. A challenge with river restoration and water quality improvement projects can often be that different areas require differing solutions and there is no ‘one size fits

            As part of the chemical export investigations the Loughs Agency team has carried out surveys on Sheep Dip and Forestry practices within the Finn catchment. These practices are potentially significant sources of herbicides and pesticides reaching local watercourses. Loughs Agency plan to use the information gathered in the surveys