Stream sleuths: using fish eDNA to determine shared catchment actions

The project aims to unlock two significant but untapped resources for citizen science: the use of environmental DNA to detect species and the capacity of the National Trust (NT) as a major landowning and volunteering organisation. We propose a scoping study and co-designed pilot to bring these together.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) are traces of DNA released into the environment by species. Sources of eDNA include secreted faeces, mucous, gametes, shed skin, hair and carcasses and these can be detected in samples of water or soil. The potential for eDNA to transform species recording and open it up to people with few or no traditional species identification skills is huge. So far, the most developed application is for fish and amphibians in aquatic environments where a simple water sample can be analysed to produce a list of species present and even provide some indication of relative proportions of different species. Initial work suggests non-specialists (anglers and schoolchildren) can collect adequate (uncontaminated) water samples that provide robust data of which species are present in a waterbody. There is an opportunity to get interested communities collecting information on what lives in their local river, lakes or pond in a way that was hitherto impossible (due to complicated and expensive survey methods or lack of species identification skills). We believe that being able to collect these data will enthuse people to find out more about the health of their local waters leading to further action either in getting more involved in data collection or in tackling issues to improve freshwaters. The use of an exciting and novel scientific tool could open up a pathway of engagement and direct action. By involving volunteers in the decision-making process and supporting them to identify local need, we believe participants will develop the confidence to share their skills with others.

The National Trust is public-facing IRO and charity as well as large landowner (250,000ha) with ambitions to transform our land to be better for wildlife and to provide a wide range benefits of benefits to society. With 5.5million members and more than 60,000 volunteers the potential to reach and engage a large community with this work is considerable. Partnership working, and public engagement are embedded strongly across the NT's overall research programme. One of the NT's challenges is to monitor the effectiveness of the changes we are making across our estate but also to ensure that our monitoring effort plays a part in a wider UK network tracking the health of our landscapes. We strongly believe that citizen science, capitalising on our member, volunteer and visitor assets, could play an important role in this respect.

Through this project we will bring together NT researchers, leading UK freshwater and eDNA scientists, citizen science specialists and a group of NT volunteers to explore the state of the art in terms of eDNA monitoring for freshwaters. Through a workshop and co-design process we will:

Generate a series of recommendations for the development of a UK-wide citizen science project based on eDNA in freshwaters

Develop and implement a co-designed pilot to test citizen science collection of eDNA species data (fish and amphibians) in a catchment where NT are leading a partnership project to improve and restore the freshwater environment (Upper Bure, Norfolk)

Review lessons learned from the pilot to inform further development of eDNA based citizen science

The project will lead directly to the development of a future funding bid for a national scale eDNA based citizen science research project.

This project will explore taking a novel freshwater species survey technique (environmental DNA) into the citizen science sphere. The project builds on the considerable volunteering capacity of the National Trust (NT) and takes advantage of a major ongoing freshwater management project (Riverlands), thus ensuring impact beyond the initial four months. There is increasing recognition of the role citizen science can play in research and monitoring (e.g. Pocock et al., 2014). However, where professionals develop citizen science projects in isolation this can be a barrier to engaging people in subsequent work (Geoghegan et al., 2016). We therefore propose a co-designed citizen science project; an opportunity for a two-way exchange of ideas between volunteers and professionals. We will focus on the use of eDNA which shows great promise for collection of species data by non-professionals. The potential for eDNA based approaches for species survey and monitoring has long been acknowledged (e.g. Lawson Handley 2015) with freshwater applications being the most developed. Recent developments in metabarcoding approaches show it is possible to generate fish species lists for standing water ecosystems comparable with traditional survey methods (Li et al., 2019). The ease of collecting the water sample for sequencing means that non-specialists can collect high quality fish species data allowing them to design and carry out studies and inform management responses. In an age of catchment partnerships and greater community involvement in managing the water environment this has the potential to be a game-changer. We will build on the scale of NT and expert partners to convene researchers, practitioners and volunteers to (a) co-design and test a citizen science approach to inform a larger scale programme collecting species data from freshwaters; (b) engage researchers in the utility of the approach to design and collect data on freshwater biodiversity. Full refs in CFS.

Three stakeholder groups will benefit from this project: decision makers and regulators directly involved in the project, organisations in the wider public and third sectors who will be engaged in the project and will have access to the outputs, and volunteers, communities and local organisations in the Bure and the Riverlands catchments more widely.

This project will initially directly benefit the decision makers and regulators involved in catchment management including the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and Natural England and Riverlands partners including the Freshwater Habitats Trust, Riverfly and Norfolk Rivers Trust. These groups will be involved in the workshop and trial, and will provide a pathway to disseminating the research findings more widely and using them to develop their approach to engagement through eDNA citizen science projects.

A wider audience of UK stakeholders active across this area of catchment management will be engaged during the project through CaBA (https://catchmentbasedapproach.org/), which is an alliance of NGOs, businesses, landowners, communities and local authorities involved in catchment management. The NT sits on the CaBA National Steering Group and would give a presentation to CaBA partners focusing on the project and project outcomes. The project team also plan to present the project and key findings via the British Ecological Society Citizen Science Special Interest Group. A project evaluation report will be produced by PI Hails with input from the project team that will be disseminated to workshop participants, other Riverlands catchment teams and the wider audience of UK stakeholders. Project updates will be publicised via NT and partner social media (twitter and Riverlands website).

The project will provide a means of engaging with local community groups in the Bure, including the Blickling Fishing Club (see Letter of Support) who feel that the opportunity to use eDNA analysis across tributaries in the catchment would provide valuable information about the presence of many different species in these river sources, adding to local knowledge of the fauna as well as showing comparative results from differing locations that might indicate which sources were of better quality; perhaps leading to an understanding of why that was so and potentially what could be done to improve the local environment. The results of the environmental findings will be shared through the Riverlands project newsletter.

This project will directly benefit researchers and practitioners at the National Trust currently grappling with the challenge of engaging more people with the sustainable long-term care for rivers and their catchments. The co-design of the eDNA citizen science project will provide a greater diversity of values, ensuring that decisions are likely to be more representative of the values of those they affect. The knowledge gained will be embedded in the development of recommendations created to take the project forward. Volunteers will be involved at all stages of the project as it progresses. Volunteers who participated in the co-design and pilot survey will be invited to contribute to a short evaluation through a combination of a web-based survey and a feedback session (making use of regular meetings of the volunteers).

The over-arching benefit of this project will be an enhanced capability to undertake ambitious citizen science initiatives co-designed by, and for the benefit of regulators, catchment managers and local communities.

This project will inform the approach for scaling up across the Bure and other catchments in the Riverlands programme, providing useful insights for NT and catchment partners across England and Wales. By being embedded in the delivery plans of the NT and Riverlands, the project impact will be sustainable over the long term.