May Action
After many many months of working with just Water of Leith volunteers, with the lifting of restrictions we’ve in turn had requests galore from local groups wanting to get involved in conservation with us again. This has meant in May (separate to the giant hogweed treatment and surveys) we’ve run 23 projects, involving 223 volunteers, equating to 619.50 hours or £5,544 if someone was paying the living wage to you all for the hard work done to conserve and enhance the river. We’ve worked with:-
- Broughton Rugby Ladies section twice
- St George’s School for Girls for three days
- 108 Pentland Cub Pack
- The Green Team
- Edinburgh Geocaching
And loaned litter pickers to the Juniper Green Beavers, Trinity Scouts and Pilrig Park school so they could all litter pick locally. On the 5th of May we found our first patch of Himalayan Balsam down at West Bowling Green St and whilst Charlotte has been working downstream killing Giant Hogweed, Johnny has been working upstream killing balsam with various volunteer teams. To date we’ve found significantly less than last year, possibly as a result of the cold snap but also as a result of the hard work over the last few years but we’ll keep hunting. The painting of the railings continues up at Currie as we renew the railings on the whole length of the walkway from rusty green to dramatic black. Although we love to have some wildspaces we are working hard keeping the walkway itself clear of overgrown vegetation to allow for maximum social distancing and to reduce conflict between walkway users. If you find any bottlenecks from nettles and brambles let us know so we can arrange a project to deal with it.
Coming Up in June/July
- More balsam hunting for sure.
- Renewing the soakaway drain behind Donaldson College with our new stone sieves
- Bank restoration at the Rocheid Path & Belford sections.
- Finding the cobbles on the lower section of walkway at Leith.
- A big wade at Juniper Green to remove lots of old metal that’s downstream of the weir
