Picnic for Change

Join a Picnic for Change on Sunday 20th August 2023 to celebrate our local chalk streams and lobby for change to protect these rare wildlife habitats.

The picnic, which will be held near the skate park on Hartham Common from 12 noon onwards, will be a family friendly event with children’s craft and playground, free cake, river fly monitoring, block printing, talks, music and poetry and local environmental groups. The event is free to attend – please come along to show your support!

Chalk streams are as rare and precious as rainforests and coral reefs and there are only 240 chalk rivers in the world. In Hertford we have four chalk streams – the Beane, the Rib, the Mimram and the Lea – but they’re being polluted by untreated sewage and runoff from fields. Plus water companies extract water from our streams, so that they sometimes run dry.