Working with the Wild Trout Trust, Godinton Piscatorials, the Godinton House Preservation Trust and the Nineveh Trust the project’s aim was to restore a 500m section of the upper Great Stour at Godinton in Kent, which had suffered from a long legacy of maintenance dredging that had left a silt-filled channel choked with emergent reed.
Peeling back emergent reed and soft sediment, introducing 1000 tonnes of gravel to raise the bed and then squashing back the reedy mass into the margins…
By carefully raising the bed whilst working upstream and shaping a regime of pool, riffle and glide a river suddenly appeared!
Newly created shallow gravel glides were given shape and structure by introducing LWD flow deflectors to help scour and sort the new bed material.
Upstream water levels were constantly monitoring during the introduction of gravels. Increases in water levels at the upstream limit of the fishery were only 100mm higher following the introduction of 50 lorry loads of 20-40mm gravel.
It is expected that river levels will rise once the new plant species have become established. Improved conveyance is expected now that the environment is more suited to flow loving submerged plants rather than the total blockage with large emergent reeds found throughout the reach prior to the project.
The section now looks to be ideal for supporting a range of flow loving and gravel spawning fish species, as well as being greatly improved environment for native crayfish.
All images courtesy of the Environment Agency
