Helping communities to help rivers

The world's rivers have never been under so much stress.

Even in the UK and Ireland, rivers are under huge pressure from water extraction ("abstraction"), climate change, pollution, and other human activities.

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

 

Photo: The River Frome, Dorset, in summer.

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?

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

• Flooding: What to do: The BBC offers a useful summary of official advice for people unlucky enough to be caught by rising waters.
• Flooding: What you should do and how to claim on your insurance by Mark King, for The Guardian, has useful advice on tackling the aftermath of a flood.
• How clean and healthy are the UK's rivers?. We've been keeping tabs on official statistics for well over a decade. We've just (November 2012) published the latest EU statistics—and we also have historic data going back over the last 20 years or so.
• Climate change and rivers: Our brand new (Summer 2012) guide to how rivers might change in a warming world.

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.

Latest UK rivers news

You can search for even newer news items yourself on our news page, where you can also find older news stories going all the way back to 1995.

The River Test at Mottisfont, Hampshire in summer.

Headlines

Sat, 5 Mar 2013: Back later!—with luck! The UK Rivers Network is currently on an indefinite hiatus while we work on developing some new campaigns.

Thu, 28 Feb 2013: Natural England promises "good newts" for development and conservation: Detailed pond survey work starts this month to plot the distribution of great crested newts across England.

Thu, 28 Feb 2013: Historic Hayle sluice gates go on show: Luckily recovered sluice gates dating from 1834 are to go on show in Cornwall.

Wed, 27 Feb 2013: Shepperton scoops Thames lock award again: It's the second year that Shepperton has won "Best Lock on the River Thames" in the Environment Agency's Thames Waterways Awards.

Wed, 27 Feb 2013: Exit strategy for the Exe Strategy: It's your last chance to catch and comment on the propsoed Exe Strategy in a series of public consultations around Exeter.

Wed, 27 Feb 2013: Somerset MP accuses Agency of negligence over Levels flooding: According to Bridgwater MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, the Environment Agency was negligent in failing to prevent catastrophic flooding on the Somerset Levels last year.

Mon, 25 Feb 2013: Exploring the rivers of Dorset: Colin Varndell has a great photo feature in this month's Dorset Life magazine.

Wed, 20 Feb 2013: Would you swim in China's polluted rivers?: Clifford Coonan investigates for The Independent. But it's always worth remembering (when you read stories like this) that a significant proportion of China's pollution is outsourced from the West. Our rivers are cleaner partly because China's rivers are dirtier. How do we feel about that?

Wed, 20 Feb 2013: Snails stop another road!: Buglife reports on another case of miniscule road protesters (a population of Roman snails) stopping construction.

Tue, 19 Feb 2013: More on the River Thame Conservation Project: Pond Conservation's website has a new update on the project, run by the River Thame Conservation Trust and Pond Conservation, in partnership with the Environment Agency.

Tue, 19 Feb 2013: SAS spring beach cleans spring forth!: Surfers Against Sewage have (count them) 45 beach cleans all over the UK from the end of March, everywhere from the Orkneys to the Isle of Wight.

More news...