On Sunday, thousands of river lovers marched to Westminster as part of the March for Clean Water organised by River Action. A sea of paddlers, anglers, surfers, swimmers, paddlers, rowers, wildlife enthusiasts, artists and conservationists took to the streets in blue. Joined together by a shared concern and love for our rivers, protesters demanded clean, healthy rivers and seas.
Our rivers are in crisis
Their current state has become a threat to wildlife and human health. Pollution, a lack of connectivity and habitat destruction mean that the Trent does not sustain the life it could.
In the Trent pollutants, including pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fungicides, forever chemicals, plastics and heavy metals swirl through our river – a sea-bound chemical cocktail that affects all life. Even our national parks aren’t spared. Recent research at Tideswell Brook, a tributary of the Derwent, revealed higher drug pollution levels than seen at urban sites in London, Leeds and Belfast, with sewage discharge the most likely cause.
Barriers block ancient migration journeys, such as those of the salmon and eel. Routes from the Caribbean’s tropical eel nurseries, Atlantic salmon’s cool, clean Greenlandic hunting grounds, all too often find a premature end at one of the Trent’s main weirs. Recent reports from the Environment Agency, revealed that wild salmon stocks are at a record low. The Trent was labelled a ‘recovering salmon river’, but with huge barriers in place, only a small percentage of fish reach their spawning grounds in the Dove and Derwent.
Beyond barriers, we have denuded our rivers and landscapes of the complexity they need to sustain species and communities that depend on them. A river is more than a blue ribbon weaving through a landscape and some would argue it should have its own legal rights and status.
Rivers need variety.
Think to yourself: When is the last time you heard a river wind its way through a landscape?
Heard it move across a gravel bed at great speed, swirl around a narrow bend, wind its way around a tree in the channel?
If you haven’t, your stretch of river has likely been modified and stripped of natural processes. The speeding up and quietening of our rivers is a symptom of a struggling straightjacketed ecosystem. Water moves through our catchments with reduced permeability and temporary storage in ponds and wetlands, and that increases flood risk.
Our rivers are in crisis and it affects us all
The plight of our rivers affects us all. Whether it’s increasing flood risk or being a key part of the natural world for us and our children and grandchildren to discover and immerse in, rivers are central to our lives. We depend on our rivers, and they depend on us.
The March for Clean Water proved that rivers have a voice through communities and organisations that consider their state intolerable. The issues will not go away any time soon, but so won’t the people, communities and organisations, demanding better on their behalf.
We won’t either. As your local rivers charity, we are working on solutions every day.
We support farmers in adopting water and soil-friendly practices, conserve, restore and enhance the natural function of our catchment, connect communities to their local river and create spongier catchments and infrastructure that reduces flood risk by slowing the flow of water.
Right now, our work improves things slowly, when it needs to turn the tide. We need bigger, better, more joined-up approaches to restore the health of our rivers. This includes a better regulatory framework, one that meets the scale of the issue with the political willpower, incentive, enforcement.
We marched on Sunday because the Trent, Dove, Derwent, Soar, Cole, Tame, Anker, Mease, Idle and Torne matter.
Support our work
If you, too, marched, supported from home, or feel inspired to do more, head to our website for a few ways to get involved:
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Download our ‘Five for Rivers’ toolkit and become river-friendly in your day-to-day life:
