Meet our team

Sarah works in the finance and accounts department, focusing on the integral management of the trust’s core accounts and comprehensively ensuring all administration responsibilities are fulfilled to the highest standard

Victoria supports the project accounts in collating and maintaining financial information for claims, provides general day-to-day finance admin support, and is responsible for aspects of Health & Safety and HR. 

With a background in landscape design and management, Dave’s main interests lie in environmental protection and restoration as well as being a keen angler.  His primary responsibility currently is the delivery of fish passage improvements across the Fowey and Camel catchments as part of the Water For Growth project.

Olivia joined the Trust in 2011 to conduct fisheries habitat walkover surveys on the River Teign, where over 100 km of the river catchment was surveyed. Olivia has since managed several river restoration projects, fish pass projects and monitoring across south Devon and Dorset, including a large Catchment Restoration Fund project, DTRIP.

As River and Fisheries Officers, Sam is responsible for riparian tree work and fisheries studies. When he’s not working he can be found on the riverbank, fly fishing.

Polly is an aquatic consultant with extensive experience of both marine and freshwater ecological surveys specialising in fisheries and the ecology of the European Eel (Anguilla anguilla). She is also a Research Fellow at Exeter University, working towards developing a non-lethal method to sex adult eels for the management of the fishery.

Phil has a varied background working in rivers, including environmental contracting, flood defence, and fisheries management. With particular interest in improving habitat connectivity, Phil is keen to delve into the technical aspects of fisheries management in West Country rivers.

James is primarily responsible for delivering the Fish Pass mobile app as part of the Water For Growth project, making token fishing within Cornwall easier. He grew up fishing the rivers, still waters and reservoirs around Bodmin Moor and the wider Westcountry, spending much of his time on his grandparents trout fishery. This experience fostered his interest in ecosystems and habitat management. 

Primarily involved in managing fish pass installations, Adrian has a keen interest in all river-ologies and the technical delivery of long term sustainable improvements to rivers and catchments.

Craig assists with river and habitat surveys, semi and fully quantitative electrofishing surveys and SNIFFER surveys of weirs. He helps with data analysis, produces GIS maps and creates reports for numerous projects. He also works with the River Ops team with riparian and river habitat restoration and improvements. Outside of work, he’s a fishing enthusiast and can be found beside a lake chasing big carp.

As an Arboricultural Apprentice within the River Operations Team, George will support the team with riparian tree works alongside in-river and habitat work too. When not at work, George is keen runner and sportsman, and enjoys spending time exploring Dartmoor.

Ian is an organic/analytical chemist. He joined the trust in 2019 after a long career in the water industry where he specialised in the monitoring of trace organic micro-pollutants and provided background chemical expertise in a number of different fields. Ian’s primary role at the trust is in helping to deliver the monitoring data needed to support a range of on-going projects, in addition to contributing to monitoring-related research and development work and providing chemical know-how to a wide cross section of colleagues.

Freya’s background is in environmental consultancy and interpretation planning. She is the project officer for PROWater. This cross-border project PROWATER will protect and restore raw water sources through actions at the landscape scale. It contributes to climate adaptation by restoring the water storage of the landscape via ‘ecosystem-based adaptation measures’ such as forest conversion or restoration of soil compaction.

Sarah specialises in the use of GIS to analyse and display spatial datasets (e.g. fish populations, habitat types and water quality) in order to monitor the health of river systems and identify areas for improvement

Nicola is a Senior Ecologist at Tamar Ecology with over 20-years of consultancy experience. She has particular expertise in managing surveys for large scale development projects and coordinating ecological impact assessments across a diverse range of sectors.

Simon has a wealth of experience with catchment scale environmental monitoring instrumentation. He has worked in a variety of roles including the development of novel monitoring tools and installation of real-time monitoring systems. Simon leads the water quality monitoring activities at the trust and has developed the Westcountry CSI volunteer monitoring scheme

Shona worked as an ecologist for the trust before becoming the charity’s Education Officer. With a background in ecology and a qualified teacher, Shona uses her knowledge and passion to engage with schools and communities across the South West and enable them to connect with their environment. Shona’s educational activities show that that once people are given opportunities to get to know their environment, they are then more likely to look after it.

Jenny’s background is in Ecological Consultancy and Green Infrastructure. Within the trust, Jenny will be working with the Urban Landscapes Team on a variety of projects, including Plymouth River Keepers (a community engagement project).

Lydia monitors and collects data from the rivers and streams of the Westcountry. She is helping to develop the CSI project to engage communities in their waterways.

Holly specialises in water quality monitoring and environmental data analysis. She assists the team both in reporting on the effectiveness of interventions and targeting areas for improvement, and monitoring and maintaining sensors deployed in various catchments under investigation

With a background in ecology and environmental management, Lucy’s main interests lie in spatial planning and the development of payments for ecosystem services schemes. Lucy’s specialisms include data analysis, visualisation and communications. She is also a project manager.

Sarah has joined WRT to support the Connecting the Culm project as Co-creation Specialist. She will be overseeing stakeholder and community engagement, providing technical input, sharing knowledge, supporting events and social media and playing a key role in facilitating the successful co-creation of the Blueprint for the Culm. Her background is in physical geography and earth sciences, social science and engineering and she has professional experience in water resources and urban water management, including alternative water supply systems such as rainwater harvesting, drought risk management and community water resilience. 

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Martin has worked in the Rivers Trust movement for 20 years in all aspects of catchment management. He has a wide experience of farming, forestry, fisheries, and natural flood management. He recognises stakeholder cooperation and economics are vital drivers for success to improve water quality, biodiversity and flood mitigation.

Steph is an experienced environmental project manager with a varied background in ecology, habitat enhancement, river restoration, fish habitat improvement schemes, fish easement and environmental contracting.

She will be managing the UST3 project and advisors. She has a passion for conservation and is particularly interested in nature-based solutions.

Dr David Valder has more than 25-years’ experience in Land and Environmental Management, dealing face-to-face with landowners and stakeholders to improve the water environment across the South West. David facilitates Natural Capital Gain and Payments for Ecosystem projects via contract procurement and project management, involving legal agreements, planning applications and land drainage consenting.

Annabel is a member of the trust’s farm advisory team, specialising in soil and nutrient management and advising farmers on fencing watercourses and improving yard infrastructure.

Giles delivers both catchment scale improvements such as Upstream Thinking and fisheries management actions. Giles has a good understanding of both agricultural systems and fisheries habitat monitoring and enhancement, which is invaluable when combined together.

James will be involved in the Channel Payments for Ecosystem Services programme, working with land managers to improve water quality, with win-win outcomes for farmers, businesses, the environment and society.