Have you been inspired to get involved and help fight the aliens? We have plenty of ways for you to get involved.
Set up your own community balsam bashing group!
We love guerrillas and the more hands we have pulling, the bigger the impact we will have. Do you have a pesky patch of balsam on your local dog walk you wish to deal with? Or perhaps you see a patch in a nearby field you’d love to chip away at all summer? Or perhaps a local group you’re a part of would like a summer activity to give back to the community? This summer (2023) WCRT are looking for local groups, individuals and families to get involved in their local area and bash balsam whenever they can. If you are not sure how to get started please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Izzie at izzie@westcumbriariverstrust.org.
We can help you adopt a patch, liaise with landowners were required and provide training sessions for your group. Not sure where you stand with public liability, insurance and risk assessments? Izzie can help you answer all your questions.
Attend one of our balsam bashing volunteer days!
We’ll be out pulling up Himalayan Balsam every Wednesday, alternate Thursdays and out with the strimmers alternate Tuesdays. WCRT will be focusing their efforts on upstream locations, at the source points of Himalayan balsam in the catchment. Through focusing our efforts in upstream locations we can reduce the seed bank in the catchment and help community groups and guerrilla balsam bashers achieve their goals. All our events will be advertised through Better Impact, please sign up and register your interest through making sure you tick ‘Himalayan balsam bashing’ as a general interest.
Resources
Please get in touch with Izzie at izzie@westcumbriariverstrust.org for more resources on how to set up a community group, but if you just want to go it alone and pull it where you see it, we have a handy guide for that!
Not really sure what an INNS is but want to find out more?
We know how it feels to be passionate about where you live and we need all the help we can get to protect our lakes from freshwater invasives. With increased numbers of visitors to the LDNPA, the increased accessibility to water sports and the ever pressing threat of climate change the risk of new INNS entering the catchment continues to rise. If you are part of a club or a group of like-minded people (perhaps yourself and a few friends swim every Saturday morning) who would like to learn more about INNS and how to stop the spread we’d love to provide you with a free training session. The more people who know what INNS to look out for and what to do if you find one, the greater the chance we have of stopping the spread. To find out more about training sessions, contact Izzie at izzie@westcumbriariverstrust.org for more information.
Learning how to check, clean, dry your equipment and stop the spread got you wanting to do more? We’re looking for biosecurity site guardians to be the eyes and the ears on the ground. If you are a frequent visitor to a particular lake access point in the Derwent catchment or have a particular fondness for Derwentwater we’d love for you to get in touch and help us develop a volunteer site guardian programme, to help us achieve better biosecurity on Derwentwater. Please email Izzie at izzie@westcumbriariverstrust.org for a chat.
