Campaigners have warned that vast stretches of valuable riverside habitat in England – crucial for water voles and other wildlife – are being lost because they are no longer protected under post-Brexit farming rules.
According to new analysis by the Wildlife Trusts, more than 400 square kilometres of riverside habitat may have disappeared since the UK left the EU in 2020.
When the UK was part of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), farmers were required to maintain a two-metre buffer strip between their fields and adjacent rivers. Since leaving the CAP, however, farmers have been free to cultivate right up to the water’s edge in an effort to maximise their income, particularly on land that had previously been left unploughed.
Riverbanks provide a vital refuge for wildlife and also support plants that naturally filter pollutants from the water.
Concerns have grown following recent revelations that the UK is using Brexit to weaken key environmental protections, leaving it behind the EU in this area, despite Labour’s manifesto pledge not to dilute standards.
The Wildlife Trusts are now urging the government to introduce binding targets for riverbank restoration projects, which they say would play a vital role in improving water quality.
In a submission to ministers, they said: “The post-Brexit end of cross-compliance requirements for farmers to maintain a 2m buffer strip next to waterways means this problem is likely to have worsened over recent years. The absence of wilder banks has significant effects on the form and function of rivers. Eroded soil and farm chemicals and manure flow straight into the channel.
“Exposed waterways, lacking in overhanging plants, let alone trees, heat up in the summer sun, sometimes reaching temperatures that are fatal for fish and aquatic insects. Road runoff contaminated with urban chemicals also flows directly into watercourses. In times of flood, waters break out of the channel, causing disruption and damage to crops, roads and homes in their path.”
The decline of riverbanks and wetlands is not new. On the River Swale in Yorkshire, research by the Wildlife Trusts found that more than half of the area’s historic wetland – including the river itself and surrounding wet ground – has been lost since the early 19th century. What remains is heavily fragmented, with the result that plant species such as bog sedge, white beak-sedge, Rannoch-rush and oblong-leaved sundew have become locally extinct.
In Devon, the Wildlife Trust is restoring a large section of riverbank at its Halsdon nature reserve, where hundreds of tonnes of soil have been lost to erosion. The damage has been linked to pressures upstream, including intensified farming and new housing developments.
Campaigners argue that addressing the post-Brexit gap in protection should be a central part of any plan to rescue England’s rivers and wetlands.
A Department for Environment,Food & Rural Affairs spokesperson said the government was looking at funding farmers to restore riverbanks, adding: “Ministers are considering how the reformed SFI scheme can best be spent to clean up our waterways, including buffer strips.”
Ali Morse, water policy manager at the Wildlife Trusts, said: “Rivers are polluted by a cocktail of chemicals, old and new, and excess nutrients from farming and sewage. Record-low spring flows and summer drought has concentrated pollution levels further, leaving wildlife under severe pressure and, as a society, we make matters worse by taking too much water out of rivers for our own use. It’s a deadly blend of damage and it’s time we invested in recovery.
“Wilder riverbanks would help stop pollution from getting into waterways and also restore badly needed natural habitats to help wildlife thrive along rivers once more. People could enjoy a riverside picnic beneath trees and see the flash of a kingfisher or the splash of a water vole.”
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At Natural World Fund, we are passionate about restoring habitats in the UK to halt the decline in our wildlife.
