Shropshire Rivers Hub

Our River Projects Team are working on a wide variety of waterway related projects within Shropshire. These projects include managing and improving the health of our streams, rivers, ponds and canals, to surveying aquatic species, running events and working with different partners to address flooding issues across the county.

Rivers, streams and other fresh water stores are one of our most important resources, critical to sustaining life on our beautiful Blue Planet.

Shropshire Wildlife Trust’s vision is to see our wonderful wild water, in both urban and rural areas, thrive and flourish bringing lots of different benefits to people and wildlife. Through careful management of our precious resources we want to be a part of providing:

• A clean and plentiful water supply
• Protection against flood and drought
• A place to play and enjoy
• Waterways that can adapt to the pressures that the future will bring
• Good quality habitats for wildlife

What are the pressures on our Wild Water?

Certain kinds of agriculture, types of industry and increased domestic demand put a lot of strain on our rivers, streams, pools and canals. Faulty or badly designed septic tanks, sewerage misconnections and pollution from a wide range of other sources make the challenges of supplying clean water for humans and nature even greater.

Climate change is a real and present danger for all of us. Increased frequency and intensity of storms, milder, wetter winters and dryer hotter summers are all predicted for us here in the UK. Flooding has major impacts on our economy, food production, public health, personal safety, and wildlife. The extent of these impacts appear to be increasing.

What are we doing to protect our Wild Water?

Working within an EU and national government frameworks, Shropshire Wildlife Trust supports the work of organisations such as the Environment Agency, Shropshire Council, Telford & Wrekin Council, Natural England and other local organisations and groups, in addition to cross-county collaboration, to help meet the growing challenges faced by our country's waterways and beyond. We work hard to access funding sources to enable key projects and habitat improvement works on all kinds of water bodies, from full landscape/catchment-scale to more localised target sites, helping mitigate climate change, protect everyone's future and make space for nature in Shropshire. 

Integrated approaches

Integrated catchment approaches are a way of looking at the bigger picture beyond the banks of the waterways.

It is about realising that what goes on in our fields, roads, parks and residential areas is fundamentally linked to our Wild Water.

Taking an integrated approach is essential and most cost effective as it aims to bring together traditional management methods with natural engineering solutions.

The Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) is a community-led approach that engages people and groups from across society to help improve our precious water environments. CaBA Partnerships are now actively working in 100+ catchments across England and Wales.

They have assembled guidance and information about planning and running citizen science and volunteer monitoring programmes. The resource pack includes a guide to water quality monitoring equipment used by CaBA partnerships, mobile apps and maps for data capture and a number of case studies from catchment partnerships using monitoring to inform and assess their catchment plans.

Learn more about the CaBA approach on their website.

Find out more

Follow the links below, follow us on Twitter or find us on Facebook to discover more about what Shropshire Wildlife Trust are doing to help manage and protect our wild water and find out how you can get involved. Follow the SWT Rivers team on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.