CSI Volunteer

Westcountry Rivers Trust is an environmental charity. Established in 1995 our aims are to preserve, protect, develop and improve the region’s watercourses, while educating people about the value of this natural resource.

The rivers and streams running across the South West are important as a resource for humans as well as providing habitat for a variety of wildlife. But constant pressure from people on these waterways can cause negative consequences for the rivers’ ecosystems. This in turn creates unnecessary expense when processing the water from them into clean drinking water.

By engaging, and sharing our knowledge with communities in the Westcountry, we aim to build our network of Westcountry CSI volunteers, developing credible and competent custodians of the watercourses.

Collecting regular water quality samples not only produces good data, which we can use to identify areas of concern, but also enables the citizen scientist to get to know their river, helping to identify positive and negative changes and influencing action where needed.