The Natural History of Slapton Ley

The Slapton Cycleau Project

The Slapton Cycleau Project is a three year (2004 – 2006) partnership project match-funded by Europe through its Interreg IIIB Community Fund. It is part of a wider transnational Cycleau Project involving 11 catchment projects in England, France and Ireland. These projects all have catchment related issues although each has its own particular emphasis. Some have ports with siltation and dredging issues, while others have mariculture suffering from bacterial pollution. In the case of Slapton, as with several others, we have a site with an environmental designation suffering due to diffuse pollution, much of which is derived from agriculture.

These projects are all working towards solving their own particular problems and then sharing that information with each other. The experiences of the 11 catchments are then to be made into a single method for managing rural catchments that can be passed on to others. This will probably take the form of a list of options with descriptions of the positives and negatives of each and where each option worked and where it didn’t. This method will be passed on to catchments throughout Europe, notably the accession countries of Eastern Europe. The project forms one of a series of pilots for the implementation of the Water Framework Directive in Europe.

To find out more about other Cycleau sites and the transnational project itself, please visit the Cycleau website.