Ford replaced to aid trout migration

A piped ford across a beck in Upper Teesdale has been replaced by a bridge after it was found to hamper the migration of fish.

Tees River Trust carried out a survey on Eggleston Burn and found much lower numbers of trout upstream of the barrier, than further down.

The ford, which dates from the 1960s or 70s, was removed using funding from the North Pennines National Landscape team, and a single span steel bridge "skilfully manoeuvred" into place.

The trust said contractors J W Bainbridge Ltd did a "fantastic" job and it looks forward to the results of the next survey on fish population.

The trust said smaller tributaries of the Tees are a really important part of the river ecosystem and often overlooked.

When the pipe crossing was installed on the section that flows through old lead mine works at Great Eggleshope in the 1960s or 70s, like many similar installations of this era, little thought was put into what impact this would have had on the fish populations.

Richard Holmes, the trusts' agriculture and fisheries lead said: "In order to understand the picture of life in the beck, electric fishing surveys were carried out up and down stream of the existing ford.

"This does not harm the fish and momentarily stuns them which enables the monitoring team to collect and measure them [which] gives us a good idea of density and age classes'.

"Whilst trout were still present up stream of the pipe bridge, numbers were almost exactly 50% lower than numbers encountered downstream."

He added: "The removal was carried out once the site had been checked up and downstream for redds - areas where fish have deposited eggs.

"The new bridge was manoeuvred skilfully into position by [the] team and free passage of fish was complete in this section of beck for the first time in many years."

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