This Volunteer’s Week, we are delighted to celebrate Derrick Guy, one of the Trust’s River Champions and an altogether outstanding volunteer.

Albeit always a River Champion in our eyes, Derrick Guy was recently recognised as a ‘River Champion’ by the River Restoration Centre (RRC) at a national awards ceremony, held in Llandudno, North Wales.

The success of projects aiming to improve rivers for wildlife and people is largely influenced by the involvement of volunteers. Like the Trust, the RRC understands the importance of this contribution and its ‘River Champion’ accolade seeks to celebrate the outstanding efforts of individuals contributing to river restoration in their area. It aims to recognise those dedicating time outside of their day-to-day roles to contribute towards improving rivers for wildlife and people.

Derrick was one of six ‘River Champions’ from across Great Britain to receive the title. He was nominated by Sarah Perry, the Trust’s River Catchment Coordinator, who has seen the impact that Derrick has made over a number of years.

Sarah says:

“Derrick is a full time, passionate River Champion and makes a difference to the River Rib chalk stream every day. Derrick coordinates a River Watch Group of 50+ local people now involved in 'love your chalk stream' activities. He leads monthly monitoring activities, including six Riverfly sites, six water quality testing sites and regular litter picking.

“Derrick also established a research project investigating how effective citizen science kits are at water quality testing, benchmarked against lab analysis. He leads on eradicating invasive non-native species (INNS) from the catchment. Through this he has developed relationships with five landowners, generated £7,000 of funding, and delivered three annual "bashing" days for corporate and community volunteers.

“The Rib had little community activity until Derrick got involved in 2019. His genuine interest in his local environment and quietly engaging leadership style has solidified a partnership involving the Town Council, major landowners, local residents, water companies and the Environment Agency to deliver catchment objectives - INNS, river restoration, water quality monitoring, public and schools’ engagement, to name a few.

“Derrick's patch is not a usual chalk stream. The Rib flows through a town in a concrete open culver, but despite these environmental challenges, he has garnered genuine interest and buy-in from a group of 50+ (and growing) River Watch champions, involved in all sorts from growing plants in a community river-nursery, to planting riparian trees and creating a social media storm around "Bernard the Bizarre Blonde Mallard".

“Without Derrick's tireless, systematic approach genuinely involving cautious landowners and volunteers over three years, INNS would still plague the top of this catchment!”

It’s not hard to see why the RRC’s judging panel selected Derrick as a ‘River Champion’ based on the impact he has made and the amount of time he has contributed to improving rivers. Congratulations Derrick on this well-deserved recognition of all your hard work and thank you from all at the Trust!

If you would like to consider joining the 1,000+ volunteers that donate their time, skills and expertise to help protect wild places in Hertfordshire and Middlesex, please visit our volunteering pages for more information here.