Community River Watch

Eastbourne & Pevensey Levels

The project in Eastbourne and Pevensey Levels will be in collaboration with Blue Heart. Strandliners will be working with community groups to undertake simple surveys in their local area. This will include water quality monitoring as well as wildlife surveys (for example dragonflies, butterflies), bird surveys, river health (for example The Big River Watch). All training in water analysis provided. The data we collect will populate Blue Heart’s interactive map and will be compared to data from their automatic water monitoring stations and from other organisations such as the Environment Agency.

We are producing a monthly Community River Watch newsletter with the latest results and the upcoming dates. If you are interested in receiving this, please email.

Upcoming events

No registration necessary – just come along and join in.
Bring binoculars if you have them. More dates to follow.
Some of our September events will include The Big River Watch (6th – 12th September) and the Great UK Waterblitz (20th – 23rd September).

Thursday 12th September at 6 pm – Pevensey
Meet at the Pevensey Recreation Ground car park
(What3Words: ///pollution.loft.flux)
Simple water testing from two waterways while looking out for wildlife. 

Sunday 15th September at 2 pm – Hampden Park
Meet outside the Lakeside Tea Room by the Lake
(What3Words:///swift.bids.these)
Simple water testing and wildlife surveys.

Friday 20th September at 11am – Eastbourne, venue tbc
This will be a simple water testing and wildlife spotting event.
This will be a Waterblitz event for Earthwatch.

What will be looking for?

We will have our own survey forms, but will also be using ID leaflets from the Field Studies Council, and some phone apps. These will include Merlin, for bird song; iRecord, for biodiversity identification and recording; Pl@ntNet, for plant identification; and the Big River Watch from The Rivers Trust. Please note, there is no requisite to purchase or download anything. The apps are all free, but this is for information only.

This will be a short project from August to November, but our aim is to continue into next year with more extensive training to enable groups to continue monitoring the same areas on a regular basis, promoting an awareness of seasonal changes and knowing what is ‘normal’ so an alert can be raised if there is an unexpected change.

About Pevensey Levels

Pevensey Levels is a 3,600-hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest between Bexhill-on-Sea and Hailsham. It is a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade I, a Ramsar site, and a Special Area of Conservation.

Part of the area is a National Nature Reserve and there is a Pevensey Marshes nature reserve managed by the Sussex Wildlife Trust.

This is a large area of wetland grazing meadows intersected by a network of ditches. It has many nationally rare invertebrates. It may be the best site in Britain for freshwater mollusc fauna, including the endangered shining ram’s-horn snail. It also has one nationally rare and several nationally scarce aquatic plants, and it is of national importance for lapwing.