UK river restoration success shows path to national revival, say conservationists

A noisy river is a healthy river, said Ruth Needham of the Trent Rivers Trust (TRT) as she stood by the River Mease in the Midlands, where the water gurgled merrily and sunlight glinted off riffles. The river appeared in fine condition, with shoals of tiny fish darting past. Needham pulled out her phone to film them, expressing delight that her colleagues would be thrilled.

Needham has reason to be optimistic. Last month, the Mease won the UK River Prize 2026, established by the River Restoration Centre in 2014 to honor innovative projects, in recognition of the trust’s 13-year restoration campaign. “The prize has been a massive boost,” Needham said. “If we can get the Mease into better condition, we can improve other rivers, too.”

The grim state of Britain’s rivers is widely known, partly due to the recent Channel 4 drama Dirty Business, which highlighted the sewage crisis. However, pollution is not the only issue. Despite public perception of rivers as natural features, humans have altered them almost beyond recognition — straightened, strengthened, deepened and sped up — with catastrophic consequences.

The Mease exemplifies this. The 27-kilometer lowland river rises in Leicestershire, passes through south Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and flows into the River Trent at Croxall. Farms line its banks; more than 400 farmers operate in its catchment area. Food production has long been the priority, and the river has been controlled and constrained — or “straitjacketed,” in Needham’s words. “For too long, water has been seen as a problem: drain it, dredge it, get it away,” she said.

Rivers are not single straight trenches like canals. They meander, merge with other waterways, and often overflow their banks into natural channels. “Water needs space,” Needham said. The wet land around rivers is a paradise for wildlife but a challenge for farmers, being unpredictable and unproductive.

Over the past 150 years, drainage ditches have been engineered along the Mease, its banks shored up, and its flow controlled with weirs. This prevented excess water from spreading across the floodplain. “A lack of connectivity between river and floodplain is seen across the board in lowland agricultural areas,” Needham said. “We’ve been draining our land for 150 years — we’ve got too good at it. It drains so well that you get flood peaks downriver, causing a massive problem for villages. Climate change is only making it worse.”

Soil, silt, and sediment washed from fields directly into the river, causing high phosphate levels that triggered algal blooms, blocking sunlight and reducing oxygen levels. “The fish really struggled,” Needham said. Two rare species — the spined loach and European bullhead — make the Mease a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Other wildlife also declined due to the lack of natural water channels with mixed habitats. “The state of the river was no longer acceptable,” Needham said.

In 2013, a restoration project began, led by the TRT and largely funded by the Environment Agency (EA). “We wanted to change the status quo, force the issue and get people to work together,” Needham said. The biggest challenge was winning over farmers, who were essentially asked to give up land — instead of farming up to the riverbank, they would leave buffer strips for water and wildlife. Building trust and applying for compensation under government environmental land management schemes took time.

So far, 111 farmers have joined, covering just over half of the river’s catchment area. Among them are Jo and Tony Thorp, a father-daughter duo who raise dairy cows on the 130-hectare Culloden Farm in Leicestershire and make their own ice cream. They worked with the TRT to restore a 500-meter tributary of the Mease running through their land. Instead of being diverted into two ditches, the water now flows as a stream that meanders slowly across the field, trapping pollutants before they enter the river and creating a wetland area that attracts birds such as the threatened sedge warbler.

On a bright spring day, I visited the site with Adam Noon, a catchment coordinator from the EA. The stream was established only last year, but algae already grew where phosphates and nitrates had been trapped, and the wetland area teemed with life. Noon identified birds as he spotted them: little ringed plover, reed bunting, yellowhammer, green woodpecker. He had previously seen lapwing and golden plover, both of which require wet ground. “Slow the flow, get the habitat right and the species will come,” he said. Right on cue, two hares appeared.

The farm is one of eight flagship restoration sites along the Mease. Another site, at the confluence of the Mease and the Gilwiskaw Brook, transformed 2.5 hectares of formerly marginal farmland into wetland now home to snipe and lapwing. “We’re creating a mosaic of habitats — jewels linked by long watercourses,” Needham said. “It’s a nature-based recovery; we’re just prompting it.”

Walking along the footpath and new bridges, I joined Jan Cope and Liane Coleman, two volunteers who routinely work knee-deep in the river in waders, pulling out invasive Himalayan balsam from the banks. Volunteers have cleared more than 12 kilometers of balsam, which outcompetes native plants like water-crowfoot and causes erosion. Today, Cope was busy removing rogue plants that survived her last patrol.

Volunteers have played a key role in the restoration, funded by Severn Trent. Cope and Coleman have been trained in riverfly monitoring — stoneflies, caddisflies, and mayflies are highly sensitive to pollution, so their presence indicates good water quality. Numbers are increasing at several sites.

In total, 17 kilometers of the river have been restored, and 25 hectares of new habitat created. The TRT has made about 250 interventions, including silt traps, wetlands, buffer strips to trap pollution, bunds, leaky barriers, swales, and ponds for flood management. The EA has invested more than £1.6 million in the catchment since 2017, with over £800,000 from developers, more than £120,000 from Natural England, and about £80,000 from Leicestershire County Council.

Separately, Severn Trent is spending more than £100 million to reduce storm sewer overflow at 17 sites across the catchment and is building a controversial new 24-kilometer pipeline to divert treated sewage from the Mease to the River Tame. In a letter to affected residents last month, the water company stated: “The River Mease currently has a flow that’s about twice as high as it should be naturally, and part of this is because of the amount of cleaned used water going into it from our works. To help bring the Mease back to its natural condition, we’re going to take the outflow from these plants and send it through a 24km pipeline we’re installing across to the Tame. At the same time, we’re going to be upgrading the two treatment works to further improve water quality.”

The Mease is classified as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) as well as an SSSI; the Tame is not. The pipeline plan has drawn local opposition, raising concern that as water quality improves in some rivers — such as at the 13 new bathing sites across England announced last week — others may worsen.

On the Mease, the work continues. About 30 additional restoration schemes are in planning. More needs to be done to support fish. Gravel has been added to the riverbed to create spawning areas, wood added and fallen trees left in place to provide feeding grounds for juvenile fish, and saplings planted for shelter. The abundant fry seen at the confluence suggest success. But one remaining weir still blocks migration. This summer, a channel will be built to bypass it, similar to the Colwick fish pass installed on the Trent in 2024 to open the river for salmon, trout, and eels.

The Mease is a small river and can access funding due to its SAC and SSSI status. Needham believes this restoration can be replicated nationwide. “If we can get it right on the Mease, we can do it everywhere else,” she insisted. “We can scale up.” She conceded that river restoration is hampered by a lack of national funding and is anxiously awaiting the outcome of January’s water white paper.

Asked how Britain’s rivers compare with the rest of the world, Needham said: “They’re pretty shocking. We really haven’t looked after our rivers at all well, thanks to a combination of engineering, pollution and neglect.” However, she thinks attitudes have changed and expressed optimism. “In 20 years, we’ll see more natural spaces along our rivers.”

Ultimately, she said, the Mease restoration demonstrated the importance of collaboration among government, campaigners, farmers, and volunteers. “We all want our rivers to be protected,” she said. “We have ignored them for too long.”

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This article was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here in edited form.