Record number of river-blocking barriers removed in Europe, report says
The number of removals grew 11% from the year before, according to an annual report from Dam Removal Europe.
It found 23 countries had removed a river barrier last year, four of which – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic and Turkey – did so for the first time.
Jelle de Jong, the chief executive of WWF Netherlands, said the rise in removals showed that communities and governments were increasingly seeing the benefits of reconnecting and restoring rivers.
'Healthy, free-flowing rivers are central to adapting to the climate crisis and boosting biodiversity, but Europe's rivers are the most fragmented in the world,' he said. 'We need to keep scaling up the removal of small obsolete dams that are blocking our rivers and set new records every year.'
Europe's waterways are fragmented by 1.2m barriers, tens of thousands of which are thought to be old and obsolete. Ecologists suggest the damming of rivers is a significant driver of the 75% decline in the continent's freshwater migratory fish population that has been observed since 1970.
The report found Finland removed the most barriers, totalling 138 removals, followed by France at 128, Spain with 96, Sweden 45 and the UK at 28.
The partially restored rivers include the Giovenco in Italy, where five removals have let a 7-mile (11km) stretch of river run wild for the first time in decades; the Rulles and Anlier catchments in Belgium, where 11 impassable culverts have been replaced with bridges to protect the pearl mussel, which is critically endangered in the EU; and the Torne in Sweden and Finland, where almost 400 barriers are being removed in a watershed the size of Switzerland.
The researchers from Dam Removal Europe, a coalition of environmental groups pushing to restore the free-flowing state of rivers and streams, said the lack of centralised databases meant their figures probably underestimated the number of removed river barriers.
Culverts and weirs, which are more likely to be old and obsolete, made up 90% of the removed barriers, according to the report. It found 65% of barriers were less than 2 metres tall, making them cheaper and easier to remove than bigger structures.
Sign up to Down to Earth
The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential
after newsletter promotion
The EU has committed to restoring 25,000km of river to a free-flowing state by 2030 after passing a bitterly contested law to restore nature last year. Member states must agree an action plan by the middle of 2026 outlining how they will meet the targets.
A study published in the journal Nature in 2020 found no catchments in Europe were free from artificial barriers, and that hydropower dams were being planned in the few relatively unfragmented rivers. The researchers concluded that achieving the river restoration goal would require a 'paradigm shift' that recognised the widespread impact that small barriers had on ecosystems.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
26 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Killer sudoku 981
Click here to access the print version. Normal sudoku rules apply, except the numbers in the cells contained within dotted lines add up to the figures in the corner. No number can be repeated within each shape formed by dotted lines. To see the completed puzzle, buy the next issue of the Guardian (for puzzles published Monday to Thursday). Solutions to Friday and Saturday puzzles are given in either Saturday's or Monday's edition.
Telegraph
26 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Sacred Mysteries: Out of the ashes, an artist in search of the essential
The fire that burnt down St Mel's Cathedral, Longford, in the early hours of Christmas Day 2009, was so intense that the limestone pillars each side of the nave spalled and cracked in the heat. As with Notre-Dame in Paris, the effects of the fire were unexpected. The roof was destroyed and the floor fell through into the crypt. But a 19th-century painting on canvas of the Holy Family survived unscathed. St Mel's Cathedral serves the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise. Both ancient foundations, Clonmacnoise was largely abandoned by the 13th century, and Ardagh had been ruinous since 1496, though the foundation stone for the cathedral at Longford was taken from the ruins. The dioceses were united in 1756. The neo-classical cathedral of St Mel's at Longford, begun in 1840, was large enough to seat 1,100 people. The architect was John Benjamin Keane, who had designed Gardiner Street Church in Dublin. The completion of St Mel's was delayed by the Irish Famine. After the fire in 2009, with the economy rocky and unemployment high, it could not have been rebuilt had it not been insured. It reopened for worship five years later, for Christmas 2014. The interior is white and light, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The most striking features are the 22 dark grey Ionic limestone columns dividing the nave from the aisles. Surviving from the old cathedral are two windows made in 1932 by the studio of Harry Clarke. A pleasant surprise to me in the new cathedral are the 14 Stations of the Cross. Because these scenes from the Passion of Christ are, in many churches, products of the 19th century, an era of uneven artistic merit, I seldom find them things of beauty. But Bishop Colm O'Reilly, who set about the reconstruction of the cathedral that he had known all his life, got Ken Thompson, born in Cork in 1946, to carve the stations that were to replace the burnt wooden paintings. Thompson had been influenced by the work of Eric Gill, and says of his own stations: 'The style of the carving is hieratic. My sympathies lie with early pre-Renaissance carving where the artist, in search of the essential, avoids over-realistic representation.' The Bath stone panels for the stations are 55in high and 46in wide. The technique is of bas relief, with the figures raised 1½in from the background. The background is painted a light blue and the lettering picked out in a terracotta colour. The dished haloes of Jesus and the saints are gilded. Each station is accompanied by a quotation from Scripture. 'The gestures of the figures in these panels are, in a sense, liturgical, acting out what has been prophesied about the Suffering Servant in the Old Testament.' A detail in several panels is of green shoots springing to life. They are visible on the hill of Calvary through the door of the tomb in the 14th station, which bears the quotation: 'Why seek you the living among the dead?' It shows Jesus being laid on a stone slab by his disciples. 'This stone slab represents the altar on which Christ's eternal sacrifice is re-enacted in every Mass.' An angel is shown coming from heaven bearing a plaque inscribed 'Gloria' – a memory of the Nativity, a record of what St John calls Jesus's glorification on the Cross, and a prophecy of the Resurrection. Above the door is carved Nika, 'Victor'. I learnt about the new cathedral from a Sister of Mercy, Angela Bracken, who lives in Longford; otherwise I wouldn't have known of it.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Refugees and asylum seekers
Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.
