Welland Rivers Trust

by Chris French, project manager at Welland Rivers Trust

OK, so we’re not talking about shopping trollies, plastic bottles and traffic cones which have no place in our rivers, streams and fen ditches… But is our British obsession of keeping things clean, tidy and presentable damaging our rivers and the wildlife that lives in them?

In the River Welland catchment, many of the rivers and streams are managed quite intensively to facilitate field drainage and convey floodwater, rather than allowing it to sit in the floodplain. This involves frequent removal of obstructions and dredging of silts and gravel with excavators.

However, trees and other large woody material that have naturally fallen into the river can provide a raft of physical and biological benefits and do not necessarily have to come at the expense of drainage and flood mitigation… cooling shade to the water which mitigates climate change associated with temperature rise. Their roots also stabilise banks and they provide food and shelter for native biodiversity. But what happens when that tree sheds a large bough or completely topples into the water? In a heavily managed landscape, this can strike fear into landowner and local resident alike, but it is a naturally occurring process that, where it poses no threat to people or property, should be allowed to happen.

Large wood in the channel creates its own unique habitat and continues to shade and cool the water. Fish take cover around submerged branches and as the wood decays it provides a source of food and building materials for native invertebrates. Portions of a fallen tree reaching up and out of the water provide perches for kingfishers and bridging points for small mammals. As water flows over and around fallen trees, it changes flow patterns, scouring pools downstream where chub and wild trout can reside and facilitating the accumulation of gravel upstream that creates spawning areas and oxygenates the water. Far from being a transient feature, the wood from certain species can be stable for decades on the riverbed. Alder trees become as hard as rock when submerged, and this was well known by past civilisations who used their wood for canoes. Even more fascinating is that most of the pilings that form the foundation of Venice were made from alder and have never been replaced!

Finally, as climate change brings more intense rainfall events to our British Isles, rivers will have to take the brunt of higher flows. Where wood exists in the channel, it can help to slow the flow of water and encourage it to spill out into the floodplain and be stored upstream of vulnerable communities. The Welland Rivers Trust and its partners are already engaged in the strategic placement of woody material in our rivers as a ‘Natural Flood Management’ tool and it is proving to be a simple and cost-effective solution that can provide resilience to communities that would otherwise not meet the investments threshold required for traditional engineered

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defences. This approach can be designed to allow the low flows underneath and cause minimum disruption for the landowner under normal conditions, only filling and creating storage when it is really needed.

So the next time you take a walk along the Welland and think it looks a bit untidy, think about the natural processes that may be taking place and the wildlife that it is supporting. Our rivers and communities would certainly benefit from things being left a bit wilder.

If you would like to know more about the Welland Rivers Trust and get involved with our work, please visit our website or send us an email! www.wellandriverstrust.org.uk info@wellandriverstrust.org.uk

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