The world's rivers have never been under such stress. Even in the UK and Ireland, rivers are under huge pressure from human activities.

The UK Rivers Network brings people together to create a better future for rivers and inland waters in the UK and Ireland.

How this website works

It's really easy to get involved in helping your local river. Here are five simple things you can do:

What's new?

Photo: The River Frome, Dorset, in summer.

Here are some new things on our website and elsewhere...

• Flooding: What to do: The BBC offers a handy summary of official advice for people unlucky enough to be caught by flooding.
• River walks and cycle rides: We've got well over 100 river walks and cycle rides on our new page. Please add in any more great watery walks you know about.
• Forthcoming river events: From pond dips and canal walks to litter picks and full-on river festivals, there are dozens of river-related events going on all over the country virtually all year round. Our new events page tells you all about them—and lets you add more events of your own.
• Introduction to rivers: A simple new guide to the basic features of rivers from Explain that Stuff!

Don't forget these older pages:

• We're continuing to develop our educational pages. Most recently, we've collected together a page of climate change and global warming photos to add to our very popular pollution photos and river photos for students and researchers.
• Need to find out about water pollution? Check out our ever-popular Pollution page. Explain that Stuff! also have a good introductory article about water pollution.
• Want to get involved with local river conservation projects? Take a look at our ever-popular Network page. We've now (finally) got an interactive map of all the UK river groups we know about. The page is now in wiki-format so you can add or change details of groups yourself.

Our website has been bringing you the latest UK river headlines, at least once a week, since 1999. If you use RSS (a way of automatically being notified when websites you follow are updated), why not try our new river news RSS feed. Feel free to serve news on your own website using our feed, but please would you be kind enough to make a link back to this page if you do so (it helps other people to discover us too).

Fri, 23 July 2010: Look what's living in our seas!: Exciting sightings of marine creatures are being reported in the run up to The Wildlife Truts' National Marine Week, which kicks off on Saturday 31 July with lots of events happening all across the country.

Fri, 23 July 2010: River Thames is London's great divide: 54% of Londoners living north of the River Thames never venture south for either work or cultural pursuits and south Londoners are twice as likely to cross the river for culture, according to a survey of 300 Londoners from both sides of the river published by CultureLine, a partnership of 10 museums and galleries along the new London Overground East London route.

Fri, 23 July 2010: New eco village on the banks of the Thames: A recent posting on Indymedia announces a new eco-village in Woolwich, east London, right by the Thames: "Calling all people who would like to experience a new way of life to come down and see for yourself the joy of community living."

Fri, 23 July 2010: Anglian Water fined for eel slaughter: Anglian Water Services was fined GBP20,000 and ordered to pay full Environment Agency costs of GBP27,837 after pleading guilty to seriously polluting the River Crouch at Wickford, Essex.

Fri, 23 July 2010: Watching the algae grow on the River Lea: Len Banister, Chair of the Ramblers Greater London Forum, presents a short film about algae on the Olympic river.

Tue, 20 July 2010: WWF: Tackling global warming is more urgent than ever: Did the UK's cold weather last winter make you wonder if climate change is really happening? Wonder no more. The period from March to May this year was actually the hottest, globally, since records began in 1880. The extent of sea ice melt in the Arctic is hitting a new high too. It's all a timely reminder that we need urgent action to slow the carbon emissions that fuel global warming.

Tue, 20 July 2010: Yangtze flooding tests the dam: Torrential rain is putting the new Yangtze dam under its most severe test so far.

Tue, 20 July 2010: Cardiff Rivers Group on a balsam bash!: One of the UK's newest and most dynamic river groups has been tackling Himalayan balsam this week on the River Ely..

Sat, 17 July 2010: Don't cut the countryside!: On the 30th anniversary of the Wildlife and Countryside Link, its members have issued an unprecedented warning about what the future would hold should the Government slash spending on conservation, wildlife-friendly farming and public recreation..

Thu, 15 July 2010: Dwindling River Usk prompts abstraction fears: Welsh Water has denied that it's abstracting too much water from rivers already challenged by low rainfall..

More river news...