Geografia

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• Why 'rewiggling' rivers could solve Britain's water crisis
• Species speed back to their natural habitat when rivers connect to their floodplains
• The Little Ouse is one of many British rivers that have been straightened and disconnected from their floodplains to reclaim land for housing or farming
• Where once these rivers snaked through marshy landscapes, releasing water slowly and providing habitat for birds, now they are chutes, rapidly whisking water downstream
• That puts people living downstream at greater flood risk, and it deprives many species of a home
• Hurst is advising the Breckland Farmers Wildlife Network, a group of 58 landowners who intend to "rewiggle" the Little Ouse, along with several other rivers in the Brecks region of Norfolk and Suffolk, connecting them with their floodplains once more
• If the river were able to burst its banks, then the plants and soil of the floodplain could periodically absorb some of those nutrients, cleaning the river water
• Rewiggling the rivers of the Brecks would also help to ameliorate another worsening environmental issue: the depletion of the region's aquifers
• Twenty-six of the network's 58 farmers will be involved in the pilot
• The 26 farmers together manage more than 40,000 hectares and about 70 per cent of the Brecks
• During the pilot scheme they will devise a plan to restore their lands over the next 20 years
• As well as rewiggling 34 miles of riverbanks along the Black Bourn, Lark, Thet, Wissey and Little Ouse, the farmers also intend to create a network of heaths, meadows and field margins for species to move through
• One purpose of the pilot scheme will be to work out how much the farmers would have to be subsidised to make it worth their while to return floodplains to marshland
• Evans says that, because sheep and cattle grazing is not very profitable, it is likely the government's offer would be enough to compensate him
• Evans is worried about the timescale of that subsidy and would be hesitant to sign a 20-year deal to take livestock off the floodplain of the Little Ouse
• Evans says "we all totally understand that environmental enhancement is a long-term game. I see what we're establishing with the Breckland Farmers Wildlife Network as being in existence in 100 years' time"