About the streamscapes programme

The Salmon is the symbol and proof of wise landscape management, as she depends upon pristine waters and a suite of similarly sensitive lifeforms.  In turn, ‘wise landscape management’ depends on peoples’ awareness of the impacts that they have upon waters & wildlife in their pursuit of livelihood, recreation, and domestic management.  Raising awareness is the purpose of environmental education and wide community engagement.

In 1989 good general environmental education programmes weren’t really on the map yet in Ireland…it was in that year that Coomhola Salmon Trust was founded by Paul Kearney and Mark Boyden, based at a small research facility on a tributary of the Coomhola River.  Amidst producing native salmon stocking projects for Irish southwest rivers, helping with the efforts to reintroduce salmon to the great River Rhine, and hosting successful freshwater pearl mussel captive breeding research, the StreamScapes  Aquatic & Biodiversity Community Engagement Project was conceived to assist with wider efforts to conserve our waters and our wilds. 

With 2022 we’ll enter the 34th year of these efforts, and in that time thousands of participants have been actively engaged throughout Ireland north and south, in indelible field experience and compelling lessons which have revealed the bounty of natural wonder about us, and of how we can assist in conserving these wonders!

StreamScapes has developed an ethos and method which have established the template for Public Engagement on water & wildlife awareness activities in support of European Water Framework Directive and Habitats Directive objectives.

If you wish to avail of StreamScapes  books, resources, or our award–winning Outreach Programme, visit here or contact us for more information.