Support citizen scientists to save the River Wye

Aim: Help us investigate and publicise the pollution of the River Wye by employing a Manager for our Citizen Science project.

The River Wye is severely polluted and suffering from algal blooms. We're working to identify where the pollution is coming from.

In 2021, Friends of the Upper Wye launched a citizen science project. We have trained over 130 volunteers to act as guardians of their local stretch of river, testing water quality up to twice a week and providing crucial data about the ever-changing state of the River Wye and its tributaries. Please watch the short film on this page which celebrates the efforts of some of our brilliant volunteers on the Afon Llynfi.

Our citizen scientists, our river guardians, inspire us every day. They have stepped up to monitor the river because statutory monitoring has been cut back. Their eyes on the river and their testing of what’s beneath the surface is the Wye’s greatest hope. Please help us to make their work count. 

Friends of the Upper Wye has had the support of a Citizen Science Coordinator.

We would now like to raise enough money to employ a Citizen Science Volunteer Manager to run the project.

Crucially, we want to turn our data into action.

One of the Manager's key roles will be to keep across the incoming data from all our volunteers and use it to inform and drive real change. We want to highlight pollution hotspots on the river and call for such areas to be cleaned up.

With this one paid post we could turbo-charge the efforts of hundreds of unpaid volunteers. 

We can't think of a more effective use of money.

The Citizen Science Volunteer Manager would:

• Coordinate our citizen science project
• Keep our incredible volunteers engaged, motivated and well-informed
• Work to improve the accuracy of data collected
• Help us to expand our volunteer network, targeting areas which are currently not tested
• Use the data collected by our volunteers to inform and drive change

If we hit our fundraising target, we will be able to employ someone for three days a week on a decent salary and begin recruitment early in 2023. If we can raise more money, we’d like to extend this post to a full-time position and use any extra funds to purchase more testing equipment for our volunteers. This would all greatly enhance the efficacy of our work. We could also use further funds to help us with outreach work to communicate our findings. 

When we have applied for grants, funds are often restricted to either the Welsh or English side of the border, adding great complexity. A major virtue of fundraising this post for ourselves is that this Manager will be able to serve the whole Upper Wye catchment without discrimination, from Pumlumon in the Cambrian Mountains in Wales to Mordiford in Herefordshire in England.

Together we can stop the pollution, clean up the Wye and see an abundance of life return.