Creating a vital blue and green future
“ There are over 160 sites across our network where fish still find it difficult to pass. The work we’ve done on the River Severn is wonderful, but only the start.” Jason Leach, Canal & River Trust programme director
With wildlife declining at an unprecedented rate, we need to help nature recover like never before. Our canals and rivers play an important role in turning the tide. By considering a gift in your Will, you could help bring nature back across our waterways for future generations to enjoy.
Now, thanks in part to your support, the ‘Unlocking the Severn Project’* is righting this wrong for wildlife. The new passes include a viewing gallery so local people can connect with their river wildlife and see adult twaite shad and other species head upstream each spring.
Helping endangered fish to climb past weirs and reach their spawning grounds has been at the heart of a major engineering project undertaken on the River Severn over the past 12 months. Two newly opened ‘fish passes’ will help twaite shad, a rare and beautifully iridescent member of the herring family, reach their traditional breeding grounds for the first time in more than 170 years. The passes circumnavigate weirs at Diglis and Bevere near Worcester, which were built by the Victorians to deepen the river for boat traffic. Sadly, these weirs stopped this endangered species in their tracks, causing their numbers to collapse.
The multi-million pound project will deliver two more fish passes by the end of 2021 and its legacy will be a healthier, better-connected and wilder River Severn. But our work is far from done. Waterway wildlife desperately needs all the support we can give. A gift in your Will can help us undertake many more projects to help wildlife recover across England and Wales. Your gift could help us realise our long-term vision for blue, green and better waterways.
To find out how a gift in your Will can transform the future of canals visit
canalrivertrust.org.uk/giftsinwills
and download our new information pack. Thank you.
© Alamy
* Unlocking the Severn is being delivered by Canal & River Trust, Severn Rivers Trust, Environment Agency and Natural England, with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the European Union LIFE programme. See www.unlockingthesevern.co.uk for more information.
