This Sunday 22nd September is World Rivers Day 2024. Celebrated each year on the fourth Sunday of September, World Rivers Day was first held in 2005 to highlight the importance of rivers and waterways, and to promote their protection across the globe.

Taking care of the waterways and rivers that run through our sites is very important to us here at The Future Forest Company, and we monitor the health of these waterways to ensure water quality stays high. 

 

Water health indicators

Water quality can be measured in many ways. Riverfly populations are used by conservation bodies to assess the health of a river or stream. Many riverfly species don't like polluted water, whether from chemicals, excess silt or untreated farm effluent. Many species also do best when a watercourse is lined with trees, as fallen leaves act as food for them. A healthy diversity of riverflies in large numbers shows that a watercourse is in good health.

The Menstrie Burn on our site at Dumyat is full of riverflies, and our woodland project there will only ensure their continued good health. We are also continuing to monitor the riverfly populations on the River Aros which runs through our Glenaros site on Mull.  

 

 

Riverflies form a key part of the diet of fish and birds, particularly the dipper, one of our most charismatic streamside birds. If there are no riverflies, there are likely to be no dippers. Our Head of Biodiversity, Lindsay Mackinlay, has sighted a dipper on one of our streams at our Brodoclea site, a positive sign that that we are doing things right.

 

 

How can reforestation alleviate risk of floods?

Forests are known to help reduce flooding, as their soils hold back and delay the passage of rainwater to streams and rivers. Reforestation is a ‘soft-engineering’ technique for flood defence, more sustainable than ‘hard-engineered’ defences such as flood walls and embankments which can be detrimental to the ecology of the natural water courses.

We have been delighted to learn that tree planting in the Menstrie Glen on our Dumyat site has been associated with a 30-minute delay in peak water flow after heavy rain, thus reducing flood risk in local areas.

How you can help

This World Rivers Day, choose the Wetland Restoration Sponsorship and help us to continue our work restoring UK wetlands today. Your purchase will contribute to the conservation and regeneration of our precious wildlife-rich UK wetland ecosystems.