We just won two national awards!
Hilton Hotel, Birmingham
A double win for North Wales Rivers Trust, recognising our pioneering water quality monitoring work through the Menai Strait Partnership Forum at the inaugural Environmental Monitoring & Measurement Achievement Awards.
On Wednesday evening, North Wales Rivers Trust was recognised with not one, but two awards at the inaugural Environmental Monitoring & Measurement Achievement Awards in Birmingham, celebrating the people, projects and organisations pushing environmental monitoring and measurement forward.
And what a night it was. We walked away with:
🏆 Best Water Quality Monitoring Project
🏆 Overall Project of the Year
Both awards recognise our Source to Sea programme across North Wales, with a particular focus on our new work within the Menai Strait Bioregion.
Capturing the Bioregion- from source to sea
We’re bringing together water quality monitoring across the journey from upland freshwater streams, through rivers and estuaries, and out into the sea. By connecting these different environments, we can build a much more complete picture of the pressures affecting our water environment and how they move through the catchment. Our new work within the Menai Strait Bioregion is an important part of this approach.
We’re combining a range of complementary monitoring techniques including Freshwater Lab Dŵr Hubs, estuarine sediment carbon surveys, Chemcatchers, vessel-mounted DGT samplers and snorkel surveys to create a connected Source to Sea monitoring network, linking what is happening in our upland streams to the health of our rivers, estuaries and coastal waters.
Volunteers s completing snorkel surveys
By combining freshwater, estuarine and marine monitoring, we can look beyond individual sites and start to understand how pressures and environmental change move through the wider system. This helps us build a much more complete picture of the water environment, generating evidence that can identify pressures, track change and support better environmental decision-making.
Volunteer saltmarsh surveys
The award recognises the work delivered through the Menai Strait Partnership Forum, which is coordinated by North Wales Rivers Trust and brings together partners to tackle water quality issues across the Strait.
The project has been supported by funding from:
Welsh Government • Isle of Anglesey County Council • WCVA • The National Lottery Community Fund
That support has enabled us to expand monitoring, connect datasets and develop a more integrated approach to understanding the Menai Strait and the catchments that feed it.
DGT samplers have been used on boats in the Strait
More than monitoring
Environmental monitoring isn't simply about collecting samples or producing datasets. It's about turning information into understanding and understanding into action.
The more connected our monitoring becomes, the better we can understand what's happening across the landscape and how changes in one part of the system can affect another.
That's why we're particularly proud that this work has been recognised with the Overall Project of the Year award.
The awards are recognition not just of the project itself, but of the people, partners, funders and communities who have helped make it possible.
A huge thank you
A massive thank you to everyone who has supported the project, contributed data, helped with monitoring, provided funding, shared expertise and worked with us to build this approach.
And congratulations to everyone else recognised at the awards — it was fantastic to see so much brilliant work happening across the environmental monitoring sector.
We’re proud to be playing our part here in North Wales.
And we're only just getting started.
