Latest News

New publication from the French National River Restoration Center, available in English!

Read the publications and meeting summaries, all about water retention methods.

Imagine a world where there are nature rich spaces, open and accessible to everybody, within a mile from everybody’s homes. The things that give our landscapes character and sense of place, such as dry-stone walls of the Yorkshire Dales, the hedgerows of the midland shires, or the parks and street trees in our towns and cities, are intact and flourishing. Businesses of all types, including farms, are drawing value and earning an income from natural assets, be that being paid for the value that pollinators bring to the food chain, or being...

The new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMs), which is to replace Countryside Stewardship and the Basic Payment Scheme, is currently being designed through various tests around the country, commissioned by Defra. The tests will work with farmers and land managers on the ground to continually feed into national pilots, to co-design the scheme and understand how new features of ELMs would work in real-life environments.

The National Association of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty was chosen to develop an ELMs test and...

The Don Catchment Rivers Trust has a mission of protecting and restoring rivers in the Don Catchment – this not only includes the Don, but the Dearne and Rother too.

Over the last ten years, they have had a focus on restoring the rivers as a habitat for fish, particularly migrating fish such as salmon. Historically, dozens of weirs were built across rivers to divert water to mills and factories, but this created an ‘obstacle course’ for fish that were unable to swim up and across the weirs. The weirs also fragmented...

This report considers how we can improve the effectiveness of riparian buffer zones to help tackle agricultural pollution. The project assesses the effectiveness of traditional grass buffer strips and suggests ways that buffers can deliver more for the environment.

The study shows that more careful vegetation management, including tree planting and additional ‘engineered’ design features such as incorporating ridges, swales, and mini-wetlands, can capture and retain diffuse agricultural pollutants most effectively....

In Scotland, beavers became a European Protected Species in May 2019. Their numbers have expanded across Tayside and beyond in recent years, centuries after they became extinct. Beavers are amazing ecosystem engineers, playing a vital role in creating habitats such as ponds and wetlands where other species thrive, alleviating flooding and improving water quality. But beavers also detrimentally impact on some areas of prime farmland by causing flooding of fields.

To ensure we have a shared approach to beaver conservation and...

Restoring degraded natural lands highly effective for carbon storage and avoiding species extinctions

Restoring natural landscapes damaged by human exploitation can be one of the most effective and cheapest ways to combat the climate crisis while also boosting dwindling wildlife populations, a scientific study finds.

If a third of the planet’s most degraded areas were restored, and protection was thrown around areas still in good condition, that would store carbon equating to half of all human caused greenhouse gas...

Watch this short film on river restoration at Swindale.

Click here to watch

Watch 2 short films of the Satterthwaite Weir Removal, South Cumbria.

Click here to watch