ii. THE ECOLOGY OF THE RIVER TRENT 

 AND TRIBUTARIES 



BY 



J. INGLIS SPICER, 



CLERK AND BIOLOGIST TO THE TRENT FISHERY BOARD, NOTTINGHAM. 



It may be said at the outset that practically no work has been done on 

 the ecology of the rivers of the vast watershed of the River Trent. Indeed, 

 such studies in this country have been very few. 



Had government and local administrations made appropriate use of 

 biological investigation, and adopted during the period of rapid industrial 

 development and urban colonisation of the country the subsistence of 

 fish life as the standard of purity to be maintained in the rivers, the 

 ' tragedy of the Trent ' would never have been written. 



A little over ten years ago the Trent was justly referred to as ' a common 

 sewer ', and that it has escaped the fate of certain other rivers is httle 

 short of a miracle. Its rescue and partial resuscitation, laborious and 

 slow over the past decade, goes to the credit of so-called ' worm and bent- 

 pin ' anglers, drawn mostly from these industries and urban colonisations 

 which, in their inadequately planned development, were responsible for 

 the river's exhaustion and, at the same time, for the self-limitation of 

 that very development. 



There is inset opposite page 98 a biological diagram indicating the pre- 

 sent situation as to river pollution in the watershed of the Trent. The dia- 

 gram incorporates practically all that is known of the ecology of the rivers 

 of the district. In the absence of definite standards ascertained by corre- 

 lated biological and chemical examination the river classification must be 

 regarded as vry approximate and it is not suggested that percentage 

 saturation of dissolved oxygen is the only factor by which extent of 

 pollution should be assessed. The diagram shows that in this one river 

 system there are over one hundred out of a total of five hundred and 

 fifty miles of flowing water where neither animal nor plant life can sub- 

 sist, and in httle more than half of the total mileage can fish live with 

 safety. 



Industrial expansion was allowed and even encouraged to go forward 

 without provision for the conservation of the water resources of the 

 country. On much the same lines local authorities are to-day throughout 

 the country throwing up vast colonies of new habitations and leaving to 

 the indefinite future provision for the treatment of the waste products 

 from such colonisations. Such policies could not but ultimately recoil 

 on the promoters or their neighbours. Water-undertakers are scrambling 

 over the hillsides over-reaching each other to tap water supplies for 

 domestic and industrial use before the other fellow gets or contaminates 



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