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.

[@kristinyannone8326]

Brilliant video

[@portcullis5622]

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.

[@user-sp3wd2nn3e]

The irony is that if you allow rivers to have trees and a swathe of natural vegetation on the banks, they won't move much. Landowners need to be educated into the fact that straightened rivers result in more severe flood damage. Maybe not for them, but for those downstream.

[@WH-hi5ew]

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

[@bloggalot4718]

Beautiful scenery in Gloucestershire.

[@JuanSebastianTorresFigueroa]

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

[@martinmentor]

Excellent work

[@markhalsey7890]

Thank you. Well shot and presented.

[@noahhutchens4523]

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.

[@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.

[@russellringland1399]

Guess what? Beavers would raise up the creek.

[@niccololanfranco3830]

Beaver dam analogs could be a solution

[@sweynforkbeard8857]

Try greatly increasing bank sloping and rip rap covered with dirt with grass planted on it. Used for centuries and proven effective. This stuff in the video is typical nonsense you see coming out of the idiot schools taught by people with no practical experience ( but hey! it's "natural", so it must be better). In ten years' time those fascines with either be blown out by floods, or they may collect woody debris coming downstream during floods, rip out, and cause even more bank erosion. During floods water will eddy around those vertical wood members and back erode your bank, with those members ending up sitting out in the middle of the stream, or just washed away. By sloping the bank, you increase the flood channel and the flood waters spread out and lose velocity. Guess what, no bank erosion. Reconnecting the stream with the adjacent flood plain is the most important when trying to reduce bank erosion. That means greatly sloping both the inside and outside banks. The fake beaver dams are an even worse solution. Dams slow the water, cause siltation and warm the water, reducing oxygen. Rock is "natural" as well.

[@jerometeyssier3171]

kzbin.info/aero/PLyVav-C4c4BNRz2EUVmuHwMQ3Xj2A9g9_

[@noelkotela]

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

[@muddywisconsin]

Great quality video

[@kasvandenhofstad9056]

Wow I wanne do this for a living!

[@pam9470]

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.

[@jwornell2114]

amazing video!

[@dac545j]

Nice editing.

[@johnp7686]

Nice shots

[@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.

[@portcullis5622]

Yes, cattle "poaching" relates to the muddy margins being excessively trampled, to the detriment of the vegetation.

[@josephhubbard4332]

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

[@johnadams5245]

fully agreed

[@Skud0rz]

there are no beavers in Leicestershire

[@johnadams5245]

@@Skud0rz there are some, just a few, in cornwall and by scotland england border

[@Maurazio]

there's always opposition to beaver reintroduction, much more difficult to get a landowner to agree

[@FowlorTheRooster1990]

@@Maurazio Its not just the landowner of the lad that the beaver will be put on, it is also the other landowners that will have to adapt to their presence.

[@jona.scholt4362]

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.

[@Abcflc]

He used the abbreviated form "Glos"

[@dac545j]

@@Abcflc Glostasha(r)

[@mayuranjayatharan7048]

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.

[@GlosWildlifeTrust]

Hi Mayuran, please take a look at this link. All the best, GWT :) www.stroud.gov.uk/environment/flooding-and-drainage/stroud-rural-sustainable-drainage-rsuds-project

[@mayuranjayatharan7048]

Thank you! Much appreciated!

[@mattrishton]

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

[@swing-o-gram]

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

[@geoffreylee5199]

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

[@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.

[@eleanormattice3598]

Are the strings biodegradable too?

[@jacobbwalters8133]

I’m sure- likely cotton strings

[@federicozanolli]

he sais so in the first 2 minutes mate watch the video next time XD

[@millhilljimjimmy6731]

That's more like a stream

[@carmengloriamugaastudillo1265]

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.

[@johnfisher247]

Try beavers.

[@colevalencia5231]

Tougher as what?

[@Chris.Davies]

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

[@grahamt5924]

Some people like hard work.

[@TottWriter]

To be fair, beavers are being reintroduced in some parts of the UK. I believe Scotland was the first. But the way these wildlife trusts work is usually through having very limited areas of land they own themselves, and then private land they have permission to access, but not full permission to rewild. Beavers are a great solution, but they need a large enough area to thrive in, and there aren't a huge number of places where that's available. It's going to take a much bigger shift in attitude from the landowners themselves.

[@billsmith5109]

They’re rodents. They’re coming. 5 years? 20? I don’t know. But it’s a done deal.

[@ireview4006]

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.

[@ireview4006]

I appreciate that this is not your land, and you can only do your good work on the parts you are allowed to. Its such a shame the UK has such a tiny amount of land given over to wildlife.

[@dominusetdeus060644]

@@ireview4006 yeah the wildlife in the UK is very limited. Lots of population and private property everywhere. Not much left for nature.

[@Maurazio]

still when you rewild all these streams you also create ecological corridors and if you manage to do the whole catchment area it can give a huge contribution. The restored river banks also filter pollutants from agriculture out before they end up in the water downstream. Some foundations also restore the whole landscape, but it's very expensive to buy land at a scale where you can do real rewilding. Humid areas are also the ones in dire need of conservation and restoration and hold a lot of biodiversity.

[@Gibbons3457]

Don't rewild productive farmland, rewild marginal land that isn't productive for agriculture. Or better yet find some golf courses we could do with a few less of those.

[@mozdickson]

Brilliant. Doing something is much better than moaning.

[@coolman69dog50]

LOL

[@robbo03]

What's funny

[@James-hx6oj]

@@robbo03 big faggot bundles I imagine

[@robbo03]

@@James-hx6oj 🙄🤣

[@couttsw]

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

[@pauldurkee4764]

Spot on, that looks like bailer twine to me.

[@GlosWildlifeTrust]

@@pauldurkee4764 Thanks for your comments! The fascines are held in place using manila rope tied to the sweet chestnut stakes. An individual fascine is tied up using either sisal string (biodegradable) if being used very soon after tying, or coloured baler twine (very much not biodegradable) if having to be stored a while before use. If the fascine structure we are creating is likely to be submerged in silt reasonably quickly, or if we are not in a position to undertake after-care, we cut out the baler twine as soon we’ve finished securing the structure with the stakes and rope. However, for high energy sites, or where we’ve experienced vandalism previously, we leave the baler twine in whilst the structure is “bedding in” - after a few months we’ll return for a maintenance visit and cut out the baler twine. All the best, GWT

[@sp-gu5wn]

This is not a river. This is ocean.