It's time to get Down to Earth for clean water and healthy habitats

Photo: buffer at Williekeld Sike

This week we’re launching our new project, Down to Earth, supported by National Gas and EC Graham Charitable’s Settlement, which focuses on working with farmers and landowners in the Upper Eden to improve soils and enhance riparian areas to keep our rivers clean and healthy.

This marks a new phase in our charity’s work to enhance and protect Eden’s rivers and comes as the pressures on the smaller upland becks that flow into the River Eden increase.

These tributaries are home to some of Cumbria’s most endangered species – it’s where Atlantic salmon and trout spawn and spend the first years of their life, and some of the last strongholds of endangered White-clawed crayfish can be found.

However, these fragile river habitats are under threat from nutrient pollution – from farming, numerous failing wastewater treatment works, and from developments that require environmental mitigation, such as the A66 dualling.

Add into the mix increased rainfall because of climate change and you have a perfect storm (so to speak), with torrents of water taking precious topsoil and nutrients from the fields and yards and depositing them in watercourses, leading to disease and death of aquatic life and destruction of already fragile habitats.

Anna Holliday, our Farming and Conservation Officer explains why having sound soils are key:

Reducing run-off and loss of nutrients all starts with having well-structured, healthy soils. By understanding their composition, meaningful and cost-effective nutrient management plans and crop regimes can be put in place. By also using management techniques to aerate the soil and minimise compaction means that soil will function like a sponge, allowing infiltration and storage of water and nutrients where they’re needed … not being lost to, and polluting the river.

To further reduce the amount of run-off reaching becks, buffer strips are an important last line of defence.

Although river buffers – wide vegetation strips found on land leading down to a water course – have been used as a barrier between the water and productive land/potential pollution sources for years, thinking about their size and composition has developed over the last year or two.

John Rattray, Head of Conservation Operations here at ERT explains more:

Based on scientific evidence, we recommend that river buffers should be 24m wide – this is a width that is proven to stop soil and run-off from entering the watercourse.

Buffers can do so much – filtering pollutants, stabilising riverbanks, providing shelter, shade and safe passage for wildlife, slowing the flow of water and protecting downstream farms and communities from pollution and flooding.

We’re pleased to see that there are now opportunities through ELMs to receive payments for habitat work such as this. This wider buffer opens up more opportunities to further improve biodiversity, as they can also be managed to include trees and shrubs that produce a harvestable crop “Orchards” along with the added conservation benefits, although this is less common at the moment.