Revitalising the River Aire to pre-industrial glory

How do Rivers Trusts undertake large scale river restoration projects to revitalise our urban rivers?

By working together central government and local charities can creatively access funding for river restoration.

Our Chair of Trustees, Geoff Roberts, explores the lessons learned in the development of our DNAire partnership project in a guest blog with the Environment Agency.

The project first took shape when Martin Slater (then Environment Agency Environment, Planning and Engagement Manager for Yorkshire Area) and I bumped into each other at a copying machine back in 2016, but little did we know we were conceiving a project that would consume us for the next few years.
GEOFF ROBERTS, REVITALISING THE RIVER AIRE TO PRE-INDUSTRIAL GLORY

Read Geoff’s guest blog with the Environment Agency here

Daylighting Urban Rivers

Many (most?) of our villages, towns and cities were built next to streams, becks, rivers – they needed water and building them there made sense. Yet when we wander around our towns and cities today, we often see no sign of the waterways upon which they once depended. What has happened and how do we restore these vital waterways to our cities?

Barney Lerner is the leading light behind Friends of Bradford’s Becks and also one of our trustees. In this video he explores the subject with an audience from the Ilkley U3A Environment Forum.