Pollution of the River Irvine Aquatic Ecology Assessment

As part of a major incident response and remediation project conducted by OHES, our ecologists were called in to conduct an extensive post-pollution assessment and recovery monitoring programme.

The loss of almost 250,000 litres of fuel oil into a tributary of the River Irvine caused an immediate and significant ecological impact.

Once the immediate impacts had been remediated, we conducted a series of surveys to investigate the longer term impacts on the ecology of the affected streams.

This involved fishery surveys in the affected reaches, and at selected control sites; aquatic macro-invertebrate sampling and analysis and an assessement of the potential impact on otter and water vole populations in the vicinity. The survey programme is ongoing.