Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the NCC - advising government, offering advice
to the public and developers, giving grants, and
funding research not just on conservation but also
on landscape matters and on informal recreation in
the countryside.
At the same time, the way that rivers are
managed and regulated in the UK has also changed
substantially. In 1989 the National Rivers Authority
(NRA) was established with responsibility for water
resource management, monitoring and regulating
pollution, and for flood control and land drainage.
Rather different arrangements applied in Scotland,
with 10 River Purification Authorities (RPAs)
undertaking pollution control and water quality,
but with other bodies responsible for water supply,
flood prevention and land drainage. Although the
NRA had a statutory duty with respect to the
conservation of flora and fauna, the RPAs did
not, sometimes leading to tension between the
conservation bodies and the water regulators.
The arrangements for river management
changed in April 1996 with the creation of the
Environment Agency in England and Wales to
replace the NRA, and the Scottish Environment
Protection Agency replacing the RPAs in Scotland.
Both bodies have important biodiversity and
conservation duties, and much stronger links
have been forged with the statutory conservation
agencies.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the
UK were already active in river conservation and
management at the time of the 1990 conference,
but their influence and involvement has grown
steadily since then. Notable among these are the
River Trusts in England and Wales (Newson,
this volume), the Rivers and Fisheries Trusts in
Scotland, and bodies such as the Royal Society
for Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the Worldwide
Fund for Nature (WWF) which published the
results of a three-year project in the 1990s on
river restoration (
Wild Rivers
: WWF, 1998). In many
other countries, too, the NGOs and the wider
public have become progressively more involved
in addressing freshwater resource issues (Showers,
2000). In the US, for example, there are several
large and influential NGOs, such as the Nature
Conservancy, Sierra Club and American Rivers,
actively engaged in these areas (Karr
et al
., 2000;
Pringle and Withrington, 2009).
Since 1990, river conservation in Britain, and in
the rest of the European Union, has also benefited
from the passage of two important directives - the
EC Habitats Directive (Council of the European
Communities, 1992) and the EC Water Framework
Directive (Council of the European Communities,
2000) (Boon and Lee, 2005). The stated aim of the
Habitats Directive (HD) is 'to contribute towards
ensuring biodiversity through the conservation of
natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora in the
European territory of the Member States to which
the Treaty applies'. Annex I lists 'natural habitat
types of Community interest whose conservation
requires the designation of Special Areas of
Conservation' (SACs); Annex II does the same for
individual animal and plant species. Only one of
the nine river types in Annex I occurs in the UK:
'Water courses of plain to montane levels with
the
Ranunculion fluitantis
and
Callitricho-Batrachion
vegetation'. Species on Annex II associated with
rivers comprise two invertebrates (freshwater pearl
mussel (
Margaritifera margaritifera
) and white-
clawed crayfish (
Austropotamobius pallipes
)) and
eight fish, including river lamprey (
Lampetra
fluviatilis
) and Atlantic salmon (
Salmo salar
).
It is clear, therefore, that the diversity of rivers
and associated species in the UK (and elsewhere
in Europe) cannot be adequately represented in
the list of protected areas selected under the HD
(Boon and Lee, 2005). Yet, since the passage of
the Directive, a great deal of effort in the UK has
been put into selecting and designating river SACs
(both for river habitat and for species), devising
monitoring programmes, and reporting to the UK
government and to the European Commission on
the condition of the designated features in each site.
While the statutory conservation agencies have
stated their intention to take a broader, 'wider
countryside' approach to nature conservation,
limited resources inevitably means a concentration
of effort on protected sites, even though they
comprise a very small fraction of the land and water
in the country as a whole.
The EC Water Framework Directive (WFD) is
not a nature conservation directive
per se
,andthe
