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Thames21 has begun restoring part of the river Cray, a chalk stream, at Foots Cray Meadows near Sidcup, south London. We aim to restore 800m of the river between now and March 2021 by adding large wood into the channel.

Chalk streams are a rare habitat globally; only approximately 200 exist worldwide. Eighty-five per cent of these are in southern England. The river Cray is a healthy urban chalk stream along part of its stretches, but it suffers the same pressures as any other urban river: plastic and other pollution, artificial modification and water abstraction for human use.

The Calder is a large upland tributary of the Spey running through beautiful Glen Banchor above the village of Newtonmore. Recent concerns that, compared to other similar tributaries, the Calder was under-performing in terms of producing juvenile salmon were thought to be linked to the lack of riparian woodland along the river and the relatively uniform nature of the river bed, which lacked features such as the gravel deposits needed for fish spawning.

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 able to run wildlife tourism businesses.

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.