About us
The Riverfly Partnership supports projects that are designed to assess the health of the UK’s rivers. Volunteers are trained to become citizen scientists and join a team to monitor their local river. They detect and report serious pollution incidents and create long-term data sets.
Our purpose
The Riverfly Partnership is a dynamic network of organisations, representing anglers, conservationists, entomologists, scientists, water course managers and relevant authorities, working together to:
protect the water quality of our rivers;
further the understanding of riverfly populations, and;
conserve riverfly habitats.
The Riverfly Partnership is hosted by the Freshwater Biological Association (FBA) as part of FBA's active engagement in the management and conservation of the aquatic environment.
In this Sep 2023 entoLIVE webinar, Riverfly Partnership Development Manager Trine Bregstein provides an overview of the project, including its history and methodology, key case studies that highlight the amazing work of our volunteers, and what’s in store for the future.
The Riverfly Partnership works according to its core aims by:
detecting environmental incidences such as pollution;
providing a forum for raising issues affecting riverflies;
developing consensus and collaborative action;
raising public and strategic awareness of riverflies, their importance to aquatic conservation and ecological function;
involving people in monitoring and recording riverflies;
offering leadership and disseminating expertise in the effective acquisition and interpretation of riverfly monitoring data;
stimulating scientific research to answer key questions about issues affecting riverflies;
improving the conservation status of riverfly species by securing healthy and sustainable populations;
seeking to form and influence debate of current issues.
As well as increasing the availability of this information, the Riverfly Partnership will address declines in riverfly populations, including declines in overall abundance and threats to individual species.
The Riverfly Partnership is hosted by the Freshwater Biological Association. It receives funding via income from fishing licence sales and a Water Environment Improvement Fund grant through the collaborative agreement with the Environment Agency. The FBA secured a grant from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation in January 2023 and this will enable the Riverfly Partnership to build upon its strengths and establish a sustainable strategy to meet the future needs of the national monitoring programme.
The Partnership comprises many individuals and groups across the United Kingdom. Our partners include angling clubs, conservation groups, trusts, businesses, scientists, research institutions, NGOs, and charities.
Images on this page: Adam Rawson, Flickr. H. Ferguson, The Riverfly Partnership.