the world has gone mad

[renewablejohn]

Take a look at the current pictures and you will see the landscape has recovered and the river is doing what it is supposed to do. If the press want a job then investigate and report the raw sewage going down the rivers from the various water companies. Or highlight the failings of the EA not to carry out drainage work or even when they do have a go at draining they get it so badly wrong that they remove the clay puddle lining keeping the water in the drainage channel.

I think this debate illustrates the tension between the way we all thought from the agricultural revolution up to the end of the last last century (when water had to be removed from land to increase its "fertility" and output) and the view gaining ground now. No worries about biodiversity or downstream flooding back then.
It is coming to be accepted that, while a straightened, deepened river channel might result in less marshy ground around a river and dryer fields, it actually has significant downsides.
I was delighted to see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-65163975 ("Salmon are breeding in a Cumbrian beck after its course was rewiggled.)
"Swindale Beck on the eastern edge of the Lake District was straightened in the 1800s to increase land for farming. But it resulted in water moving too quickly, scouring away the gravel banks needed by fish to lay their eggs. A project started in 2016 between the RSPB and United Utilities to return the Haweswater watercourse to its natural route has seen the return of Atlantic salmon, with 20 recently counted." And by complete coincidence I have just found this too: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65341994 about the same project.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ca-uk-land has an interesting couple of paragraphs:

Compare this record with policy in the UK, which, 37 years after Umaña set to work, is still pissing about with half-solutions and non-solutions, held to ransom by rich and powerful property owners and entirely incapable of making strategic environmental decisions, especially on land use. While Costa Rica’s wildlife is booming, ours is in freefall. The government seems determined, against all advice, to allow this disastrous trend to continue for the rest of the decade...
So why does a rich, powerful nation fail, while a small, much poorer one succeeds? Talking to Umaña and researching the history of this transformation suggests a simple answer: quality of government. When governments are committed, decisive and consistent, things happen. When they are beholden to lobby groups, cronyism and corruption, and delegate responsibility to an abstraction called “the market”, they spend decades flapping their hands while chaos reigns.

Who writes this garbage and dont they actually think before they write it. Just look at the life cycle of atlantic salmon and anyone will tell you the salmon return to spawn in the river that they where born in for the salmon to return they must of already been breeding in the river to start with. It really is not rocket science.

[Joeboy]

I would be interested in finding out if 'always' is cast in stone or if 'mostly' is closer to the truth for the river return trope.

I'd expect any species to spread into newly available and beneficial territory.

I also think that calling someone's article garbage is a pretty poor show. Have your own opinions for sure but try and regulate it a bit?

[Bugtownboy]

In the words of the great philosopher, “What came first, the Salmon or the egg ?”

[Moxi]

More on this article:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/fa ... 17b4&ei=39

and

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/f ... 9329&ei=33

Moxi

[Mr Gus]

The eels were in the fen marshes long before the fens were drained & straightened, remeber, just off the A1 by peterbough was a "mere" comparable to "windermere"

Due to pollutants streaming off fields linked with the area eels have had a hard time, our last uk eel trapper retired, ..the trade died he was a hold out.

My mates wife (ex EA) during the 1990's was a catch & monitor, believe they had numerous raise fry & release to rejuvenate broken rivers here in east anglia (they were based in brampton, not far from where yet another giant landfill of many decades leaches crap into the water, it's the way we live as much as anything, farming gets a bad rep, because we fail to look at our trash output & disposal (we know how recycling & waste licenses have turned crooked, dumping stuff overseas, etc)

& we also know the responsibility of anyone on whpse land trash is fly tipped by these shifty a-holes, leaching crap into the wateer table.

Some may jump on the farming chemical overuse, without looking at how govt encouraged / forced farming to be overproductive, no-one is completely blameless here.

[renewablejohn]

More on this article:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/fa ... 17b4&ei=39

and

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/f ... 9329&ei=33

Moxi

Thanks for posting this. It just goes to show how the EA have used the BBC and other press agencies to misdiect and manipulate the public and potentially the court. Have a look at post 5 on this thread and the BBC article which is supposed to show the River Lugg according to the EA photo prior to the work being carried out. You notice loads of trees either side of the river but what you probably fail to notice is that the photo is actually taken downstream of the bridge whereas the work was carried out upstream. You need a very keen eye to spot the parapets of the bridge are different viewed upstream and downstream but the real giveaway is the ripples on the water. Now the trial is finished and prision sentence handed out the true picture of the seen prior to work commencing appears as an EA photo in the second of the articles above. What a totally different story hardly a tree to be seen on the right bank given John Price already had a Forestry Commission felling licence to remove 270 trees.

I do hope this case does go to the European Court of Human Rights as it strikes at the heart of Riparian Landowners rights which have been part of English Law for centuries.