First, a word of context. This isn’t an RFCA project, and we can’t claim any part in it. We’re sharing it because it’s a story from our own catchment that we think members and readers will find genuinely heartening and because it says something important about how rivers are brought back to life.
The stretch of the River Darwen in question was taken on by The Balderstone Syndicate around four years ago. It was here that the grayling story began, driven by the vision of syndicate lead Neil Smith [West Pennine Angling Solutions], who believed grayling could once again live and breed in a river they’d been absent from since the industrial age.
But that vision didn’t land on a blank canvas. Long before the first grayling were introduced, this section of the Darwen had already benefitted from several years of habitat improvement work by Ribble Rivers Trust, delivered in partnership with the landowning farmer Heather. That patient, unglamorous groundwork improving the general health of the river and its banks created the conditions in which a project like this could even be attempted.
It’s worth remembering what the Darwen once was. Known locally as the “Rainbow River,” it ran coloured with the dyes and effluent of the cotton and paint industries that lined its banks. Taking it from that to a river now supporting breeding grayling has been the work of many years and many hands but chiefly the Ribble Rivers Trust and the Environment Agency, working steadily across the whole catchment.
Against that backdrop, the syndicate’s grayling project could take root. Over three years, juvenile grayling from the EA’s Calverton hatchery were stocked, the historical case for their native presence was carefully researched, and the hard yards were put in — scale sampling for the labs, and bird-scaring on the stretch day after day through the winter.
This summer, the EA’s National Fisheries Laboratory confirmed what everyone had hoped for: natural recruitment. The Darwen now holds a self-sustaining, breeding population of grayling, and the EA have shared the story across their newsletters and beyond.
If there’s a lesson in all this, it’s that no single organisation delivered it. It’s a jigsaw or perhaps a tapestry of agencies, trusts, a fishing syndicate and a landowner, each contributing their piece: Ribble Rivers Trust, the Environment Agency, Calverton hatchery, the National Fisheries Laboratory, EA Fisheries Officer Damian Linney, and the members of The Balderstone Syndicate. Take any one piece away and the picture is incomplete.
That, more than the fish themselves, is what makes this a success worth celebrating.