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The drive across the top of Exmoor down to the North Somerset coast is a beautiful proposition. It isn't as dramatic as some landscapes, but at this time of year it's filled with glorious colour, grazing animals and not much else. For me, coming from the heavily populated South East, the peace and remoteness is a welcome break from the crowds. The RRC has had a number of previous visits to the estate, but it was my first visit which I had been anticipating with excitement.

Holnicote sits on the edge of Exmoor, a 12,500-hectare...

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With the field season fast approaching the Floodplain Meadows Partnership along with partners the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, the River Restoration Centre and The Nene Rivers Trust are ramping up work on our Water Restoration Fund (WRF) project in Northamptonshire. 

We have been awarded a WRF grant to produce a twenty-year strategy for restoration of river and floodplain habitats on the Rivers Nene, Ise and Tove. The three river valleys are nationally important for their remaining areas of...

A range of management options along a spectrum of decreasing conservation value

The main reason for writing this article is to provide an outline of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, held in Abu Dhabi from 8-15 October 2025. I'll try to explain the way the WCC works, how it produces 'motions', how those motions are then approved, and what that means for practical action in promoting and supporting conservation. Because you're reading this on the website of the River Restoration Centre, it's a reasonable assumption that you're interested in rivers, whether because of your paid employment, through voluntary work,...

Application Deadline:Monday, May 12, 2025

Interviews: Tuesday 3rd or Wednesday 4th June 2025

Remuneration: Unpaid voluntary. Reasonable travel expenses covered.

The River Restoration Centre (RRC) is the UK's expert advice centre for best practice river restoration, habitat enhancement and catchment...

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The River Rom has a tough time descending the hills north of the Thames, straightened and embanked as it flows through the suburbs of east London before plunging under the A12 and then passing culverted under Romford town centre. A different picture was presented to us on the RRC members site visit, when we were shown around the 2024 UK River Prize award-winning rewilding site on the River Rom. 

Thames21 and their many partners including the Barking and Dagenham Council Ranger’s service and their platoon of volunteers have changed...

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The RRC team enjoyed a morning out of the office this week to visit a newly restored stretch of stream here in Bedfordshire. Anglian Water have recently completed a pocket restoration project to restore a 1 km stretch of Broughton Brook, as part of the Anglian Water WINEP programme. The scheme involved re-meandering sections of a modified channel (historically straightened, over-deepened and over-widened). A sequence of riffles and pools can now be seen in the re-profiled, re-wiggled and narrowed channel. Isolated trees have been planted...

Ullswater Members Site Visit

Posted on 17 November 2024

Small Racy Ghyll reconnected stream

Thank you to the organisers and to all those who attended the RRC’s site visit to Ullswater on 6th November 2024. You may remember that the ‘Ullswater Catchment Restoration’ won the UK River Prize awarded by the RRC last year. The project was a worthy winner for its 10 years of work delivering 280 river and floodplain restoration projects from farm-scale up to large-scale. 

On our visit we enjoyed a beautiful autumn morning beside Goldrill Beck with Rebecca Powell from the National Trust. We admired the restored course of the river...