After a drive up to the Taff valley in pouring rain a group drawn from the Pembrokeshire Rivers Trust, The Towy Rivers Trust and The Teifi Rivers Trust attended a really interesting days instruction on how to identify the invertebrate life in their rivers. Monitoring the fly life in the river enables groups to gauge the quality of the rivers water by alotting values to the different species that live there. Some species can tolerate more pollution than others, these are alotted high values while the most hardy species are awarded lesser values. The combined values of the various species give a snapshot of the health of a river when compared to values acheived on earlier samples.

Dai Roberts was the tutor for the day

Following a briefing we went out into another glorious July 2007 day to see what the rapidly rising Taff at Cilfynydd had to offer

After a demonstration on how to collect samples we had some hands on experience and emptied what at first glance looked like a pile of.....rubbish.

On closer inspection we realised that the Taff was teeming with life and took the samples back to the lab provided by Dwr Cwmru to identify the haul.

The different species were seperated

And then, to the amusement of all the rookies, pacified by the carbon dioxide in soda water for closer inspection.

It was a great day, we learned a lot very quickly and were able to see a range of invertebratesin their aquatic stage, olives, blue winged olive, caseless and cased caddis, heptagenidae, stonefly - all from a post industrial river. Very encouraging indeed.

Many thanks to Dai and all his helpers, Dwr Cwmru for their excellent educational facility and the EA for lending us their local ecologist for the day.