Save Our Bride Otters

Save Our Bride Otters (SOBO) is a community group formed in March 2021 in the Blackpool area of Cork City. The OPW were granted permission to do extensive work on the River Bride in the area of Blackpool village (Blackpool Flood Relief Scheme), including putting the last remaining open part of the river in Blackpool underground into a culvert and also putting extensive other parts of the river into concrete channels, which is disastrous for all wild life. SOBO took a Judicial Review of this decision to the High Court, and in January 2022 the State conceded the case. Therefore SOBO will receive all our costs back. We are so grateful to all of those who contributed to the funding of our case through GoFundMe - we literally couldn't have taken the case without your backing. We intend to keep all the money we have collected safely in a bank account, as the OPW will be back again with another proposal for the River Bride in the next few years. The next time we will be very ready to deal with the OPW if we feel their proposals are not the best option possible. In the meantime we continue to keep the river clean, and we are doing regular monitoring of the otter activity in the river, and this is all being officially recorded, so there can be no doubt in the future as to the importance of the River Bride for the otters in Cork, along with many other species. We will continue to engage with all the relevant official agencies, and we will continue to advocate for the little gem that is the River Bride. We thank all our supporters again. We are leaving this GoFundMe page open as it is useful for information purposes, but we are not actively fundraising at the moment.