On Monday the Cranleigh Civic Society accompanied members of the Environment Agency (EA) and Surrey Wildlife Trust (SWT) on a formal river walk along Cranleigh Waters.

Regular readers will know that we have been highlighting the fact that Cranleigh Waters stops flowing, especially during summer and autumn months, for some time, and have been involved in ongoing discussions with the EA and SWT.

Both of these organisations are taking this situation extremely seriously and the river walk was arranged to help to identify areas of low to no flow, obstructions, signs of wildlife, invasive species, as well as to gauge the overall depth and width of the river.

This was an extremely useful exercise and we would like to thank all of those who took part and look forward to sharing their report.


Become a Volunteer River Warden

Going forward we will continue to monitor Cranleigh Waters for pollution, as well as help to improve and protect its biodiversity.

And that’s where you come in.  You can help us by becoming a Volunteer River Warden for Cranleigh Waters.

If you are interested in protecting and improving our local environment and becoming a trained volunteer please let us know as soon as possible.

We have arranged our first RiverSearch volunteer training session with the help of Surrey Wildlife Trust.

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Our FREE training day is on 2 September 2016 at Farnham Town Council Offices from 9:30 am to 4:00pm.  Numbers are limited to 12 people and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Please contact us if you would like to reserve a place and we can send you more information about the format of the day.

We will be encouraging people to car share so let us know if you need a lift.

After attending the training session our volunteers will be assigned a stretch of river (averagely 1km in length) and asked to carry out a mapping survey (with the consent of the landowner) during which all features and habitats along the river are mapped and photographed and any issues reported.

Following this initial mapping survey volunteers carry out regular walk over surveys once every 3 months keeping an eye out for any issues as well as recording the wildlife and habitats they come across.

This is an exciting opportunity to get involved and help to protect the river habitat on our own doorstep for the benefit of local people and our local wildlife.

Further training will be available to our volunteers as our programme progresses.

Get in touch and book your place


If you are unable to attend our training day on 2 Sept but would still like to help protect Cranleigh Waters please do get in touch, we would love to hear from you.