Diversity returns to Lakeland stream after restoration puts its bends back

After months of hard work extracting spoil using diggers to reshape and create new channels and restore a Lakeland stream to its natural state, the rewards for Lee Schofield were almost instant.

“It was like flicking a switch, the natural process switch. As soon as the water started flowing through the winding channel, nature was back in charge again, and all of that diversity came back, almost as if by magic,” said Schofield.

Gazing at the before and after pictures of Swindale Beck, a tributary of the River Eden that flows through the eastern Lake District near Haweswater reservoir, the changes are obvious. On the 1859 Ordnance Survey the stream appears as a straightened channel, and it has remained that way ever since, until Schofield and his colleagues intervened to put the bends back into the Lakeland brook.

“The river was straightened a couple of hundreds years ago by people living in the valley to protect the hay meadows and reduce the risk of flooding and protect the farmland,” he said. “It made total sense at the time but it has meant the quality of the river habitat has been degraded over many years.”

The straightened channel caused a fast flowing stream, removing gravel for fish to spawn in, removing habitats for insects and despite the initial intentions, increasing the risk of flooding as the narrow straight flow led to flash flooding after heavy rainfall.

The impact on the wildlife was marked most dramatically by the reduction in salmon populations in the Eden, which has traditionally hosted one of the largest salmon populations in the north of England. But since the 1970s, the numbers returning to the river and its tributaries to spawn have fallen by half.

Making Swindale Beck meander, pool and ripple once more through the remote Lakeland valley south of Penrith, was part of a project to restore about 60 miles (100km) of streams and rivers in Cumbria to as close to their natural state as possible. The work has recently been recognised internationally by being selected as the winner of the European Riverprize, which celebrates conservation and development of Europe’s rivers. At a time when rivers in England are under enormous pressure from agricultural and sewage pollution, and while no river has passed tests for chemical and biological health, the work on the beck, and the many other streams and tributaries in the project provides evidence of the positive impact of protecting and restoring rivers.