The Angling Trust, in partnership with WWF, RSPB, and the Association of Rivers Trusts is spearheading a new campaign called Our Rivers to raise the profile of protecting and improving river environments.

However, the campaign will only work if it is supported by the local groups and individuals who know their rivers best. It is a campaign to focus attention on our country's rivers at a time when they need it most and to use the opportunity presented by the recently-launched consultation about the River Basin Management Plans being developed as part of the Water Framework Directive to make real improvements to the condition of our rivers. This may sound dull, but it is very important that anglers make their voice heard. The aim is to make it easy and fun to get involved and to ensure that it has a genuine impact on decision-makers. This campaign will complement the Blueprint for Water campaign with which the Angling Tust have been involved for several years, see: www.wcl.org.uk/blueprintforwater

The Our Rivers website will be a key part of the campaign and is currently under construction. The website will be the hub of the campaign, where groups and individuals can stand up for their rivers by flagging up the issues facing them and using the tools provided to take a series of timely actions to raise their profile over the coming months. The Angling Trust want to feed all the local knowledge that exists about this country's rivers, information from the people who know their rivers best into the Water Framework Directive consultation process. They want to make it as straightforward as possible for people to participate in the process, without getting bogged down in all the detail. The Angling Trust and its partners will use this information to lobby decision makers in Defra and the Environment Agency on your behalf.

Via the website there will be two ways to respond to the RBMP consultation - one will be the formal EA e-consultation with guidance notes and links to relevant parts of the documents and annexes. The second way will be something far simpler - to enable anyone who knows about their river to feed into the process, after all it's this local knowledge that is so important, yet many of the people with the local knowledge lack both the time and the resources to plough through lengthy consultation documents.

The first step on the website will be to stand up for your river and create a basic river file with details of the person/organisation, the river and the issues the river is facing, which will be attached to a pin (in a relevant location) on the Our Rivers map - the main feature on the homepage of the Our Rivers site. The Angling Trust want there to be hundreds of these pins on the map by the end of June.

When the site is launched we want to do so with a good spread of pins already in the map. This is why the AT are asking for your help before the site is actually launched.

Firstly, we would like your river and your issues on the map when we launch the site. The questions below are designed to make this process really straightforward.

You don't need to give all the information about your river now, you can update your river file at any time once the website is live.

In addition, you may know other local groups or individuals who would also stand up for their river and would be up for being on the map when it is launched. You can either forward this email to them or their contacts to the Angling Trust ... Either way it would be great if you would encourage them to get involved.

For the moment they need to know:

1. Your name
2. Your email address and/or phone number (your personal details other than your name/initials/nickname will NOT be listed on the web site, or used for any purpose other than administration of the campaign)
3. Whether you represent an organisation (and if so what is its name?
4. Where you are (your postcode), so that we can locate your pin on the map.
5. The name of your river/stretch of river
6. The issues/pressures facing your river, including their source and what they are doing to the river.
7. The category/ies into which the issues fit: agricultural pollution/ low flow problems / physical modifications and habitat / point source pollution from sewage treatment works or combined sewage outfalls / sediment / other
8. Any actions you think could be taken to address those issues.

If you have already made yourself familiar with the River Basin Management Plan for your region and want to make any comments, particularly in relation to whether or not the plans have correctly identified the issues on your river then please do. Otherwise you can always do this at a later date once the Our Rivers website is live - there will be guidance notes and links to make navigating the consultation documents as straightforward as possible.

PLEASE EMAIL YOUR ANSWERS (your river file) TO vicky@taylorgarnerltd.co.uk. The information will be inputted and your pin stuck on the Our Rivers website map in time for the launch.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope that you will get involved in what might be a major campaign for the Angling Trust.

Mark Lloyd Chief Executive, Angling Trust