As part of a national programme to improve the health of rivers across England and Wales, we've launched the Derwent Riverlands project.
The river Derwent is a mountain river that runs from Sprinkling Tarn in the high Lake District fells out to the sea at Workington. On the way it passes through Cumbrian towns and villages, farmland and woodland, peat bogs and dockyards. All of these make up the Derwent 'catchment' – the lands that the river flows through. The Derwent's 'riverlands'
The Derwent's 'riverlands' are home to otters, atlantic salmon and the UK's rarest freshwater fish, the vendace. But it's under pressure from climate change, pollution and man-made alterations to its course.
On this project timeline, we'll be posting regular updates of the work we're doing behind the scenes, so keep checking back in to stay up to date.
14 August 2023
The Riverlands project is growing.
Until now, the Riverlands project has been focused on projects two distinct valleys in the Lake District; Ullswater & Borrowdale. But now, Riverlands is expanding its reach to find more rivers in need of our help across the whole of the Lake District. It's a big patch! But the team is excited by all the potential and possibilities.
To follow our progress, check out our new web page at Riverlands in the Lake District.
31 July 2023
Today is World Ranger Day which celebrates the work of rangers across the globe. It is estimated that there are half a million rangers supporting nature, wildlife and public access. The Riverlands Team is incredibly lucky to not only work with the amazing rangers in the National Trust, but also to have our very own ranger on the team.
We couldn’t have delivered the Riverlands projects without our ranger colleagues – from planting trees to digging ponds or leading guided walks, they are the keystone that holds our projects together. So it’s with heartfelt thanks that we wish them all a happy World Ranger Day!
23 July 2023
Bog Day is celebrated around the world every year on the fourth Sunday in July. This year it's on Sunday 23rd July. The aim is to celebrate the importance of bogs, fens, swamps and marshes, and it is an opportunity to raise awareness of the threats they face and the ways we can all help to protect them.
Peatlands are wonderfully wild places, home to a rich variety of plants, birds, and insects. They also provide a wide range of services to society, including drinking water, carbon storage, flood prevention and a historical and cultural archive.
Working with partners at Natural England, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, United Utilities and Fix the Fells, the Riverlands project has already restored nearly 90ha of peat bog on Armboth Fell above Borrowdale. And this year we’ll be supporting the work of the Great North Bog project on Armboth, by improving the footpath network across the fell to protect the restored peat, which is easily damaged by walkers straying off the path in search of a dryer route.
30 June 2023
The rivers in Borrowdale valley – famously England’s reputed wettest location – are in serious prolonged drought conditions. For the third year in a row the River Derwent which flows through Borrowdale has dried up almost completely – and it’s not the only river which is suffering in this summer’s prolonged drought. Across the Lake District, rivers are drying up and lakes are shrinking.
Often watercourses like the River Derwent dry up in drought because they have historically been altered from their natural course. Returning rivers to a more natural state can help make them act less like drains and hold on to more water, which also has benefits in times of extreme rainfall as it slows the flow downstream.
Becky Powell, Riverlands Project Manager says: “The Riverlands project has been working hard to deliver strategies which increase the resilience of our environment and communities to climate change. We have delivered projects across the Lake District, including in Ullswater where Goldrill Beck used to run dry, but is now still flowing despite the dry conditions. This not only helps the river and all the plants and wildlife which rely on it, but it also provides sustainable drinking water for livestock. Storing water in the landscape in this way not only makes it more resilient to drought and wildfire, but to flooding also.”
12 June 2023
Running from 10-18 June, Great Big Green Week is the UK's biggest celebration of community action to tackle climate change and protect nature. To celebrate the Riverlands team are putting on two guided walks this week, taking a closer look at some of our projects and exploring how they can help mitigate against the impacts of a warming climate.
Taking in our peat restoration project on Armboth Fell and the pond creation project at Dunthwaite, the project team will explain how important it is to slow the flow of water through the landscape. Slowing the flow will project us, and nature, against the impacts of both drought and floods - which we know will both become more frequent and intense in the future. Check out greatbiggreenweek.com to find an event near you.
29 April 2023
This year, Riverlands has commissioned a ‘health check’ of all the rivers on National Trust landholdings in the Lake District. This will combine desk studies and modelling with walking over 200km of rivers carrying out field assessments.
We’re asking the surveys to tell us three key pieces of information; whether (and to what extent) the rivers have been modified from their natural form, how resilient the rivers are to climate change, and how easy or challenging it would be to restore them to a more natural form.
The project team will use this information to build a list of potential projects across Cumbria, and consider which projects are the highest priority. It’s a big task, and we expect it will take around 12 months to complete.
If you’d like to know more about this work, get in touch with the team at lakes.riverlands@nationaltrust.org.uk
21 February 2023
We’ve been working with West Cumbria Rivers Trust for more than a year to support their engagement programme. This aims to connect people to the water environment around them, hoping to set up the next generation of conservationists. While a lot of our work has been focused on delivering education sessions in schools, we have also been working on developing a ‘green gym’ offer for communities on the west coast of Cumbria.
The participants are referred via social prescribing, and carry out all sorts of activities including plug planting, fencing, tree planting and path maintenance. The aim of the sessions is to improve both their physical and mental health, connecting them with their local communities and reducing loneliness and isolation. It’s been an exciting trial, and we’re looking forward to gathering feedback from all the participants at the end of the project to fully understand the impact the green gyms have had. Our thanks go to our funders at the Green Recovery Challenge Fund for supporting this work.
22 January 2023
Today our ranger team were at back at the Dunthwaite pond creation project, planting 16 of the rarest native trees in Britain on the wetland landscape around the new ponds – the black poplar. Black poplar are an important wetland tree species that belong to the wider willow family or Salicaceae. Once commonplace, they have been in steady decline since the mid-twentieth century when widespread draining of agricultural land across Britain greatly reduced the availability of their preferred wetland habitats. With help from a specialist from London, trees of an ancient local strain were sourced and brought on location.
There are only an estimated 7000 black poplars across the country, and of these only 3 were recorded in Cumbria. So it was an honour to plant these rare trees in the new wetland at Dunthwaite, adding the finishing touch to the restoration project. Our sister project, Ullswater Riverlands, planted another 16 trees on the Goldrill Beck floodplain, making a total of 32 new black poplar trees introduced into the Cumbrian landscape.
12 December 2022
Our Riverlands Ranger has been working with small teams of volunteers this winter to carry out some peat restoration and footpath repairs by hand on Armboth Fell.
The groups have been reprofiling peat haggs and building leaky dams with nothing more than spades and shovels. It’s certainly muddy work! But we hope that these opportunities for volunteers to get involved help more people understand the importance of peat and why we should protect it.
30 November 2022
All the Riverlands work sits as part of the Cumbrian River Restoration Strategy; a partnership led by the Environment Agency and Natural England which aims to improve the habitats of rivers and catchments across Cumbria. Partners in the Strategy include the National Trust, Rivers Trusts, RSBP, United Utilities, Ullswater CIC and many more. Together, we have delivered over 100 projects across the Lake District, and so we were thrilled to hear that the partnership was nominated in 2022 for the European RiverPrize, an award which celebrates excellence in the management and conservation of rivers in Europe. As a group we ventured to the award ceremony, this year held in Vienna. Astonishingly, we won!
The partnership was up against stiff competition, with other finalists representing projects that worked across multiple countries in Central Europe, creating multi-national biospheres and running campaigns to protect the last truly wild rivers in Europe. It was truly humbling to have the work that we do in the Lakes recognised by such a prestigious award, and as a partnership we’ve been galvanised to continue this important work to conserve and protect the rivers in the Lake District.
You can read more about the European RiverPrize, including details of the other finalists, at riversymposium.com/european-riverprize
14 November 2022
There’s good news for the peat restoration project on Armboth Fell, as phase 3 of the scheme has secured funding through the Great North Bog, a partnership project restoring peat bogs across the North of England.
This builds on the past two phases of peat restoration work which Riverlands delivered in partnership with United Utilities, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Natural England and Fix the Fells. Altogether nearly 90 hectares of peat bog has already been restored through the partnership, and the project team is delighted that the next phase of work is secured.
You can find out more about the Great North Bog project at greatnorthbog.org.uk
28 October 2022
Riverlands is planning an exciting collaboration with Keswick Museum, where we’ll be sharing information about the project in the community gallery. We’re busy planning details of the exhibition, which will complement the museum’s main exhibit in 2023 exploring the history of flooding in Keswick and the surrounding catchment.
The exhibition will run across summer 2023 – watch this space for more details soon!
13 October 2022
Last winter, thanks to a generous private donation, Riverlands supported rangers in Loweswater to build a series of enclosures for native tree planting on Whiteoak Moss. The planting created areas of rougher land to slow the flow of water across the fell, as well as providing a vital seed source on the fellside for future tree regeneration.
Our ranger team have been checking on the tree’s health and are pleased to report that they’ve all done well this year, despite the stresses of the drought and extreme heat, and the enclosures have worked well to protect the young trees from grazing sheep and deer. The project team thank the donor for making this piece of work possible.
11 August 2022
The first week of construction on the Stonethwaite naturalisation project is coming to an end, and it’s already clear to see what a difference the project will make. This image shows one of the ponds being dug on the floodplain, which are designed to create seasonally wet habitats and connect with high flows when the river is in flood. Although we did expect them to hold some water in the summer, we were surprised – and delighted! – to see just how rapidly the ponds have filled up in the current dry conditions. At a time when the government is officially declaring a national drought, and widespread measures to save water are expected across much of the country, this goes to show how much of an impact we can have using natural water management and river restoration techniques.
9 August 2022
Dunthwaite has been progressing apace, with most of the ponds now dug and all the ditches blocked. The scale of the ponds is rather magnificent, and it’s wonderful to see them already starting to hold water in what was previously an extremely dry landscape – despite being the height of summer and in the middle of a heatwave. We’re in discussion with our tenant and the designer about potentially creating a few more ponds across the fellside to maximise the benefits of the project, before we add the finishing touches to the landscaping and reseed the bare earth around the ponds.
1 August 2022
With the end of the school year also comes the end of our most recent programme of Forest and River Schools. Working in partnership with West Cumbria River’s Trust, we’ve taken hundreds of children from primary schools along the West Coast into the national park to join our forest and river schools. The children have joined in with all sorts of activities, from river dipping to insect identification, learning through play and exploring the natural world around them. We hope that providing these experiences that connect children with nature will set them up as our next generation of conservationists – and we’re thrilled to be planning the next round of forest and river schools to begin in September.
26 July 2022
The Lake District National Part Authority has approved our plans for works on Stonethwaite Beck, upstream of Rosthwaite in Borrowdale. These plans will restore natural processes to this heavily modified river, improving habitats and reconnecting the river to its floodplain. Working with Ebsford Environmental, we’ll be beginning work on site in early August, and should be complete within five weeks.
18 July 2022
Work has begun on the Dunthwaite Estate, where this summer we’ll be installing a series of Natural Flood Management features across the fell as it drains into the River Derwent. Historically, artificial drains have been constructed across the landscape, rapidly moving water from the high ground into the main river. This can increase the severity of flooding as water is drained too rapidly into the river, so we’re delighted to be working with local contractor Tom Lindsay to use NFM techniques to slow the flow of water across the fell. Over the next few weeks Tom and his team will be blocking ditches and creating ponds, which as well as holding water will also create wetland areas and provide wonderful habitats for wildlife to thrive. This builds on the brilliant work of our first Riverlands apprentice, Jade, who built a series of leaky dams across the fellside – another tried and tested NFM technique.
11 July 2022
In early July, our Riverlands ranger and apprentice joined forces with Fix the Fells to fly materials up to Armboth Fell to begin an exciting peat restoration project. The plan will restore areas of dried peat along the footpath from Watendlath to Armboth to store water which will restore the peat, a vitally important ally in our fight against CO2 emissions, as well as providing a habitat for a variety of upland plant species. We will also be improving the footpath with crenelated pitching to allow hikers to cross the newly restored peat. This work ties in with the larger Armboth project which finished phase 2 earlier this year.
5 May 2022
This summer we’re planning to make a series of interventions to the beck at Stonethwaite in Borrowdale, introducing more varied natural features into the river channel including riffles, rapids and pools. Healthy rivers have natural complexity; diverse forms and varied flows favour different species. Reinstating these natural features will create ideal environments for a range of animals and plants to thrive. We’re delighted to have appointed Ebsford Environmental to deliver this project for us, and are hoping to begin work in July. Ebsford previously delivered a wonderful river restoration project for the National Trust at Goldrill Beck, Ullswater, and we’re excited to work with them again this summer.
12 April 2022
The second phase of peat restoration above Thirlmere has been completed. Across the peat bog between The Pewitts and Bleaberry Fell we’ve blocked historic peat drains, reprofiled peat hags, and installed bunds to create pools and re-wet dry areas. Working in collaboration with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, United Utilities and Natural England, we also planted around 20,000 plug plants to enhance biodiversity and help the bog retain water. Altogether (including phase 1 restoration in winter 20/21), nearly 90 hectares of peat bog has been restored across Armboth Fell, which will increase water storage, protect carbon sequestration, and enhance this valuable habitat.
2 March 2022
We're beginning a second phase of peat restoration works on fells above Borrowdale. This is a collaborative project between the Riverlands project, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, and United Utilities, following on from the successful restoration works carried out on Armboth Fell last year. Machines are moving on to site this week to reprofile peat hags and block drainage pipes, which will re-wet the area and help prevent the erosion of the peatland. Works are due to complete by the end of March.
18 February 2022
Our rangers have been over near Loweswater this week planting trees on Whiteoak Moss. A variety of native species have been planted, including oak, birch, willow, Scots pine and aspen, within enclosures which will protect the young trees from grazing by sheep and deer. The planting will create areas of rougher land, slowing the flow of water across the fell, and will provide a vital seed source which will hopefully see regeneration spread from the initial enclosures in years to come. This work was made possible by a private donation. The project team would like to thank the donor for giving us the opportunity to carry out this tree planting which will make the area better for both wildlife and people.
1 February 2022
The Riverlands project team visited Armboth Fell to see how the work from last winter has settled in. The area has recovered well, with lots of new vegetation establishing across the restoration. The newly installed flagged footpath kept our feet dry, which was a marked improvement on previous visits! A second phase of peat restoration work will start in February 2022, in a collaboration between the National Trust, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Natural England and United Utilities.
14 July 2021
Only a couple of months after works finishing on Armboth Fell the restored bog pools are thriving and the cotton grass planted last month is flowering. The work, completed in partnership with the National Trust Riverlands project, Fix the Fells, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Natural England and United Utilities, has improved access through the addition of a stone path and restored a heavily eroded area of bare peat, providing nature with a little help and space to recover.
11 June 2021
Volunteers recently joined our partners Cumbria Wildlife Trust on Armboth Fell for the final touches on the peat restoration works which took place earlier this year. Several thousand plugs of cotton grass were planted by hand across areas of exposed peat. This species is native to peatlands and wetlands and as the plants grow their root systems will help stabilise the restored areas and reduce erosion.
29 April 2021
Works have been completed on Armboth Fell, in partnership with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, United Utilities, Fix the Fells and Natural England. The works have seen an important area of peat restored, creating bunds to hold water back and create pools. Overtime, Sphagnum moss will dominate the area and new peat will begin to form. Access through the site has also been improved, where a flagged path has been laid to protect the restored area from trampling. The remaining work to fence off the area, to protect it from grazing animals, will be completed over the coming weeks.
15 March 2021
The peatland restoration project on the fells above Borrowdale will also improve access by creating a stone path through the restored area . This will make it easier for people to pass through, at the same time as ensuring the habitat restoration work is protected. To prepare for this, the team have been overseeing the materials being lifted by helicopter onto the high fells. The works are being carried out in partnership with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, United Utilities, Natural England and Fix the Fells, who are leading on the path works with funding from the European Rural Development Fund.
8 March 2021
We have started works in partnership with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, United Utilities, Natural England and Fix the Fells to restore a badly eroded peat bog on the fells above Borrowdale. Our contractors started work when the ground was frozen so they could navigate the bare peat. They have installed bunds across the site which will hold back water, creating the ideal wet environment for sphagnum moss to grow. Sphagnum is nature's perfect water filter, so the works will ensure cleaner water leaving the area as well as slowing the flow and locking up carbon within the regenerating peat. The restoration works are funded by the DEFRA Peatland Grant Scheme and Supported by The National Lottery.
12 October 2020
Over the summer our Riverlands apprentice, Jade, has been working hard building natural flood management features at Dunthwaite. Jade has been using several techniques, including felled trees and woven willow hurdles to create leaky dams in small streams. These are designed to slow the flow of water to the River Derwent during high flows. Jade will be keeping a close eye on them to see how they perform over winter months.
Learn about our work on nature, climate and sustainability, and find out what you can do to make a difference.
This project is funded by the government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund. The fund is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England and the Environment Agency.
The European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) finances the EU's contribution to rural development programmes (RDPs).
Environmental Agency is a public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, working to create better places for people and wildlife, and support sustainable development.
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