Wildlife UK Forum - Discuss the UK countryside and wildlife

We've been relatively lucky this year so far, as there haven't been the major floods that we've had in recent years. There has been talk on this forum before about what is causing the floods to be much worse than they were before. The main reason has to be building of flood plains, but a farmer has come up with a new suggestion that the lack of wildlife caused by the Environment Agency not clearing rivers effectively is the problem.

He says that the River Derwent used to be teeming with life but is now overrun with plants and trees so that the river doesn't flow properly. If the river was cleared, the wildlife could return and the river would flow better making it less prone to flooding.

It sounds logical enough for me! The Environment Agency have said they will monitor it, but they really need to do something about it.

http://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/mostpopul...ecline.php

It's a really interesting thought.

Around here (in the state of Washington, in the US), dredging of rivers is not allowed because the rivers all have salmon runs associated with them. But, with increased runoff of silty water, there is now too much muck in some of the rivers.

An interesting paradox.

Kingfisher

In some ares, the cause of flooding is as a direct result of drainage of the peat moorland. This has been done to increase the growth of heather (which actually prefers the better drained slopes of the moorland plateaux) on the plateaux to provide better habitat for grouse which can then be shot. Many of the drainage channels started out as simply a spade wide by a spade deep, but here in the Dark Peak, there are some that you could now drive a bus along.

It seems like the cause isn´t the lack of wildlife that is just an effect of the river being overclogged. Still terrible though, it must be awful to see the wildlife slowly disappear in front of your eyes.

Isn't that what has happened to UK wildlife generally in the last 50 years?

It has definitely declined in all areas, although this is a pretty extreme case.