River restoration on the River Eye

The Cotswold Rivers Living Landscape Programme aims to reconnect and restore healthy river habitats throughout the Cotswolds. For this to succeed, it is essential for communities to value and get involved in protecting their local wildlife.

In this short film John Field, Wilder Landscapes Manager at Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, highlights how important rivers our to us, and the work that conservation work that has been carried out on the River Eye.

Film produced by Matt Jarvis.

[portcullis]

The main problems with trying to restore damaged rivers in the UK are the privatised water companies using rivers as open sewers and also getting enough riparian owners to agree to having restoration work done. There are so many different landowners along any river, that is difficult to gain consent for positive change.
For example, rivers naturally move with erosion and deposition, but for several generations, landowners have been used to rivers being a fixed, straight line. They don't want rivers to move, as they are worried about losing land. Hence the opposition to beavers being reintroduced.
Here in Yorkshire, we have many miles of relatively deep, spate rivers, with much erosion (often from banks that were cleared for land drainage in the 1960s/70s). Overgrazing and poaching by livestock are a big problem and excessive upland drainage has made rivers more prone to flash flooding.
I don't see things changing anytime soon.

[pam]

As others have mentioned below, very informative/instructive video - thanks also for not talking incessantly and giving us a chance to enjoy the river, plants and countryside.

[JuanSebastianTorresFigueroa]

Lovely and inspiring thru the science and the heart of the best human beings ;)

[micah_lee]

I have never thought about fascines before. Here in the US we get lots extremely eroded out banks. On my property we have lost some pretty old trees due to erosion. If we implemented these fascines, it would be a very good fix. We really need to raise the whole creek back up so that it can overflow it’s banks, though. They have like 4-5 ft high banks and no floodplains.

[WH-hiew]

Wonderful habitat restoration... great to see. Thanks for posting this.

[noelkotela]

Great to see it explained so well. Amazing shots as well

[josephhubbard]

Why no beaver reintroduction to allow them to manage the rivers instead?

[noahhutchens]

Love the informative nature of the video. Very interesting using degradable materials to shore up an edge of a stream. Seems counter intuitive at first but once you explain makes lots of sense.

[mayuranjayatharan]

Hello I am a postgraduate student currently studying the effectiveness of natural flood management. Do you have any reports or articles based on your finding.

[andrewjones-productions]

I have never heard the use of the word 'faggoting' in this way before. I wonder if there is a correlation between the meat balls and this technique as in a way, they are both compressed or 'stuffed'. What I didn't understand what you meant by 'cattle poaching', despite growing up on a farm. Perhaps you meant cattle going to the river to drink and as they do, erode the bank into the river. We used to put up hurdles (short fences) to prevent the cattle from eroding the bank (i.e., the field too!) to make them go to a flatter part. Very interesting what you are doing and I can remember my late great grandmother lamenting (back in the late '70s) the demise of wild flowers and birds. Many, if not most farmers are in agreement with protecting our wildlife. It is actually important for farmers too and not just nostalgia.

[mattrishton]

Nice work; but is this not river enhancement rather than restoration?

[Jon.A.Scholt]

Wow, he said Gloucestershire in that opening sentence much faster than this Midwest American could've understood without the subtitles and title of the video.

[TheLaughingDove]

Great video and great topic, I was looking away when the stick related topic was brought up though and had a moment of gay whiplash until I realised lol! I love techniques like this though, there is something awe inspiring about the subtle nuances to how waterways function.

[swing-o-gram]

Sounds and looks like you're doing what beavers would do naturally.

[ireview]

But it is barely a patch of nature. What of those huge fields next to it? Can't that be rewilded to forest and meadow?
Wildlife needs more than a foot of brush at a riverbank to thrive.

[carmengloriamugaastudillo]

Ahora estamos parados en una bomba de tiempo 2022. Cómo tan poca visión? La reforestacion debe ser responsable y con biodiversidad. Prioridad en la orilla de los ríos. Ellos se ayudan por la raíces para su sobrevivencia. Cómo tan poca visión? Juntos podemos.

[geoffreylee]

Get some European Beavers, then there is fun. Canadian Beavers are a bit more aggressive.

[Chris.Davies]

Jeez - just get some beavers, and let them do their thing.

[mozdickson]

Brilliant. Doing something is much better than moaning.

[couttsw]

The pink twine holding his willows together is not manila, plastic through and through, biodegrades in 10 thousand years.