Restoring the Dee Together: a new partnership for the River Dee
The Dee Trust, North Wales Wildlife Trust and Buglife are working together on an ambitious project to restore habitats, tackle pressures facing the River Dee and get more people involved in caring for the catchment.
Restoring the Dee Together is a three-year partnership project funded through the Nature Networks Programme, bringing together the experience and expertise of all three organisations to deliver practical conservation alongside community involvement and citizen science.
The project is already underway, with volunteers and staff getting involved in activities across the catchment. Over the coming months and years, this work will continue to grow as more restoration, monitoring and community activities are delivered.
The River Dee and Llyn Tegid Special Area of Conservation supports an incredible variety of wildlife, but its habitats face a number of pressures, including nutrient enrichment, invasive non-native species and habitat degradation.
Over the course of the project, the partnership aims to:
- Restore approximately 3.5 km of degraded riverbank and floodplain habitat, including tree and shrub planting, fencing, alternative livestock watering and in-channel habitat improvements.
- Install approximately 50 small-scale Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) to intercept surface water and help improve water quality.
- Manage invasive non-native species across approximately 50 km of riverbank, including Himalayan balsam, Japanese knotweed and American skunk cabbage.
- Deliver around 36 litter picking events and 60 education and outreach events, giving communities across the catchment opportunities to get involved.
- Recruit and train volunteers to take part in practical conservation, surveys and monitoring.
- Deliver four citizen science programmes, covering water quality, invertebrates, rare invertebrates, and soil erosion and Himalayan balsam research, with approximately 210 citizen scientists trained during the project.
Working together
Each partner brings different skills and experience to the project.
The Dee Trust will continue working with communities and volunteers across the catchment, alongside delivering river restoration, citizen science, litter picking and Sustainable Drainage Systems.
North Wales Wildlife Trust will bring expertise in invasive non-native species management and community conservation, helping to coordinate action across the catchment. Buglife will bring specialist knowledge of invertebrates, helping us better understand, monitor and protect some of the smaller species that are such an important part of healthy river ecosystems.
By working together at a catchment scale, we can connect practical habitat restoration with better monitoring, stronger partnerships and a growing community of people with the skills and knowledge to look after their local rivers.
There’s already plenty happening, from volunteer activities and citizen science to invasive species management and practical work on the ground. We’ll be sharing more from across the project as it develops, including the work already underway and the people helping to make it happen.
This project is funded by the Nature Networks Programme. It is being delivered by the Heritage Fund, on behalf of the Welsh Government.
