Mink are vicious things. Some people from the animal management course in the next building to the forestry course our son was on at college did work experience at a wildlife park where they had mink in a secure house. The house had two parts so the mink could be isolated in one part while the other was cleaned. They were warned to always make sure all the mink were isolated before opening as they would bite badly as soon as look at you. Letting mink out was an ecological disaster, and shows what damage well meaning but uninformed idiots can do.
if they are improving matters why is the wye declining?
the motives of wwf quietly dropping that report and tesco sponsoring "cute" projects could be open to several interpretations, some less than charitable options are on the list
in other river news, the Test is almost entirely degraded, including some serious one off incidents as well as the SW systemic sewage discharges which include the Test but cover many rivers and beaches
considering my advice to a random group of scouting canoeists exiting the local river was"time for tea, buns and broad spectrum antibiotics"
and
our local citizen scientists have found coliforms and worse in the river and in the flood mud, which is extensive from the river and also from becks, drains etc, neither a stroll with the mutt(see local vet anecdotes etc) nor water based activities are biologically "safe"
Slim
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6609 Location: New England (In the US of A)
it does have the look of fire truck foam, could be a variety of stuff
, the aquatic wildlife will be seriously reduced whatever it was
the local obvious is multiple sewage facilities conducting discharges in several upstream catchments with towns and villages, at an informed guess the load is further forced by the other catchments that join this one before they mess up the sea
Ofwat has made some bizarre decisions over the years. Our water supply has always come from a private company that hasn't been involved in all this mess and has always been pretty good. They planned to build a new reservoir in the 1960s and purchased the land ahead of what they saw as a lot of new houses in the area. Ofwat told them they couldn't build it until they had solved their leak problem, which isn't particularly bad, and is always dealt with promptly and well. The reservoir is finally being built now after several thousand houses have been built with several thousand more planned.
On the other hand, our sewage supplier hasn't had such a good record and has got involved in this mess. Selling shares and lumbering the company with debts seems to be the main problem and Ofwat haven't, as stated in the article, done much about that.