World Rivers Day is a celebration of the world’s waterways, shining a light on the importance of our rivers and why we should all protect them, and takes place every year on the 4th Sunday of September.
In Abbey we’re lucky enough to have a rare chalk stream right on our doorstep. Coldham’s Brook is a small chalk stream that begins at Giants Grave in Cherry Hinton and flows through central Cambridge and Coldham’s Common to the River Cam. These globally rare streams are havens for wildlife, and are often described as England’s rainforests. The mineral-rich waters of chalk streams can provide vital food and habitats for a high number of significant species such as Kingfishers, Little Egrets, Bullheads, Chubb, Common Darters, and the endangered Water Vole.
In celebration of World Rivers Day, we’re reflecting on what the community has done to protect Coldham’s Brook and looking forward at what we can do together.
In partnership with Keep Britain Tidy and Cambridge City Council, we have been working with the community to conserve and improve our chalk stream. This has involved conservation days, litter picks, and raising awareness through events and activities including popular bat walks along the brook.
Thanks to the Pebble Fund and Flourishing Environment grant, our regular volunteer conservation days on Coldham’s Brook helped to:
- Install 4 log flow deflectors
- Plant aquatic plants to provide food and habitats for wildlife
- Help the in-channel flow
- Add gravel to create more habitats for invertebrates and breeding fish
A group of local volunteers also meet regularly to survey riverfly in the brook. Riverflies are invertebrates that spend most of their lifecycle in a river, brook, pond or lake, and monitoring riverfly is a fantastic way to understand and protect river health. As part of the 2024 Cambridge Nature Festival, Coldham’s Brook riverfly volunteers shared how they survey the brook and invited members of the community to have a go at identifying the different riverfly including Gammarus, Cased Caddis and Olives.
So far this year our volunteers have collected a whopping 30 bags of litter in Abbey, preventing it from entering the waterways. Abbey RiverCare volunteers have collected all kinds of litter – from plastic bottles and cans to old socks and vapes, as well as reporting some weird litter to the City Council for collection including drills, kitchen bins and shopping trolleys.
We aim to get the brook to “good ecological potential” status by 2027, by working with people in the local community, Friends of Cherry Hinton Brook, the City Council and Keep Britain Tidy. If you would like to get involved and help protect your local chalk stream, please contact Caitlin to find out more about our upcoming activities at greenspaces@abbeypeople.org.uk.
We would like to give special thanks to the National Lottery players for their support through the National Lottery Climate Action funding the River Cam CAN (Climate Action through Nature) project.
This 2-year project is involving communities near the River Cam in working on solutions that will benefit them and help to make the city more sustainable and resilient. The main project location is the city’s most disadvantaged ward, Abbey. Communities will transform neglected areas including those around ecologically important chalk-streams, ancient willow trees along 10km of the Cam’s riverbanks, a community urban farm and a roadside verge outside a school. A series of community climate action events and activities are also being delivered, including more Repair Cafes and Climate Cafes.
The main project partners are Cambridge Past, Present & Future, Abbey People, CoFarm, Cambridge City Council, Climate Outreach and Water Sensitive Cambridge but the project will work with a much wider range of organisations.
