Cotswold Water Park Trust has received a £70,000 grant from The Hills Group through the Landfill Communities Fund and additional funding from the Environment Agency.

The money will fund a two year project enabling a series of environmental enhancements to be carried out at two key sites in the Cotswold Water Park, Cleveland Lakes and Shorncote Reedbeds.

Additionally it will help to create better ecological connections between them by enhancing the Cerney Wick Brook.

Cerney Wick Brook is in poor condition, with long stretches of the watercourse suffering from dense over-shading, artificial straightening and a general lack of channel diversity.

Peter Andrew of The Hills Group with The Cotswold Water Park Trust bio-diversity and estates team

Of all the Thames tributaries in the Cotswold Water Park, it is possibly the most stable in terms of flow, due to the artificial input of water from the Shorncote sewage treatment works.

This presents a huge opportunity to create and sustain a vibrant, flourishing watercourse, with its own permanent residents such as kingfisher, water vole and otter.

It is currently utilised by all these species, but merely as a navigational tool, rather than as a home.

Peter Andrew of The Hills Group and Kim Milsom of The Cotswold Water Park Trust looking at some of the wetland habitat restoration that has already commenced at Cleveland Lakes

Where these species have historically colonised its entire length from the Thames upstream to Shorncote, they are now no longer resident.

Luckily the project is improving the ecology of the river and the habitat for fish and invertebrates.

Hopefully the program of work will benefit water birds and water voles which are yet to fully colonise the brook.

Teams are hard at work de-shading along the river.