Warming rivers are losing oxygen faster than the oceans
Climate change is causing rivers across to warm and lose oxygen at a rate faster than the oceans, according to a new study. The study, published in Nature Climate Change shows that warming occurred in 87% – and oxygen loss in 70% – of nearly 800 rivers in the USA and Central Europe between 1981 and 2019.
Urban rivers are warming most rapidly, whilst rivers in agricultural areas are losing oxygen most rapidly, the study states. The latter finding is likely influenced by the algal blooms caused by nutrient pollution in many agricultural landscapes. Often driven by warming water temperatures, algal blooms can deplete water bodies of oxygen when they die and decompose.
Oxygen is crucial in supporting the webs of life that inhabit freshwaters. If dissolved oxygen levels in river water dip too low then species of plants, animals, fish and insects will all struggle to survive. Whilst it has been well documented that oceans and lakes have been losing oxygen due to climate warming, it has been widely thought that – because of their flowing water – rivers were less vulnerable to its impacts.
The study’s findings has significant implications for the health of rivers across Europe and the USA, and is a stark warning of the urgent need for their restoration in order to buffer the harmful effects of climate change. Warming rivers with depleted oxygen levels are vulnerable to fish die-offs and drops in water quality, which can have significant knock-on impacts on local livelihoods through impacted fisheries and tourism.
“This is a wake-up call,” said Prof. Li Li, corresponding author on the paper from Penn State. “We know that a warming climate has led to warming and oxygen loss in oceans, but did not expect this to happen in flowing, shallow rivers. This is the first study to take a comprehensive look at temperature change and deoxygenation rates in rivers — and what we found has significant implications for water quality and the health of aquatic ecosystems worldwide.”
The research team used a deep learning model – a type of artificial intelligence analysis – to reconstruct daily water temperature and dissolved oxygen levels in the 796 studied rivers between 1981 and 2019. They found that on average, rivers were warming by 0.16 deg C per decade in USA rivers, and 0.27 deg C per decade in Central European rivers. Deoxygenation rates were between 1–1.5% of loss per decade – faster than those in oceans, but slower than those in lakes.
“Riverine water temperature and dissolved oxygen levels are essential measures of water quality and ecosystem health,” said Dr. Wei Zhi, lead author of the study, from Penn State. “Yet they are poorly understood because they are hard to quantify due to the lack of consistent data across different rivers and the myriad of variables involved that can change oxygen levels in each watershed.”
The authors highlight that as river water temperatures increase, their ability to hold gases is reduced. They suggest that ongoing climate warming could thus spark even more significant drops in dissolved oxygen in rivers in the future. Their models suggest that future deoxygenation rates across all rivers will be between 1.6 and 2.5 times higher than historical rates. They suggest that within the next 70 years, many river systems – particularly this in the American South – are likely to experience periods of acutely low levels of oxygen which cause significant deaths in fish populations.
“If you think about it, life in water relies on temperature and dissolved oxygen, the lifeline for all aquatic organisms,” said Prof. Li. “We know that coastal areas, like the Gulf of Mexico, often have dead zones in the summer. What this study shows us is this could happen in rivers as well, because some rivers will no longer sustain life like before.”
“The loss of oxygen in rivers is unexpected because we usually assume rivers do not lose oxygen as much as in big water bodies like lakes and oceans, but we found that rivers are rapidly losing oxygen,” continued Prof. Li. “That was really alarming, because if the oxygen levels get low enough, it becomes dangerous for aquatic life.”
The study is a clear signal for the need to better manage our freshwaters to help mitigate the harmful effects of climate warming. On a large scale, it reinforces the urgent need for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in order to minimise climate warming over the coming decades. On a smaller scale it emphasises the important role of restoration projects which expand riparian vegetation and woodland along river banks to help keep their water flows cool.
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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.
MERLIN Podcast Episode 4 – Mainstreaming freshwater nature-based solutions across economic sectors
Nature-based solutions are a hot topic right now. So-called ‘NbS’ are environmental management approaches that use natural processes to help tackle socio-environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, flooding, food production and health and wellbeing.
The MERLIN project explores how the benefits from nature-based solutions can help foster collaborations between different economic sectors to help mainstream freshwater restoration. MERLIN works with representatives from six economic sectors – agriculture, hydropower, insurance, navigation, peat extraction, and water supply and sanitation – to encourage the adoption of nature-based solutions in their activities across Europe.
MERLIN project partners recently released a briefing exploring how nature-based solutions are understood across these sectors in Europe, and – vitally – how they might help encourage collaborations which strengthen restoration efforts.
In this podcast, host Rob St John speaks to project partners who work with these sectors, and in doing so, explore the key issues highlighted in the briefing. Rob talks to: Esther Carmen (Hutton Institute), Sanja Pokrajac (WWF Central and Eastern Europe), Alhassan Ibrahim (Hutton Institute), Jack Rieley (International Peatland Society), Tamas Gruber (WWF Hungary), Kirsty Blackstock (Hutton Institute) and Mia Ebeltoft (MERLIN).
You can also listen and subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Amazon, and Apple Podcasts. Stay tuned for the next episode soon!
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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.
Urbanisation is a key driver of freshwater fish declines in rivers across Europe and the USA, according to a new study. An international team of scientists assessed data from over 30,000 sites across the two continents to examine how fish populations respond to different human land-uses in river catchments.
Freshwater fish are threatened by multiple human pressures across the world. However, the ways in which fish are affected by pressures – such as pollution and habitat loss – can vary in different areas. As such, there is a need to better understand how fish populations respond to different stressors caused by human activity on a continental scale, in order to support effective conservation strategies.
The authors of the new study – published in Science of the Total Environment – used large-scale datasets to assess how the frequency and severity of different human stressors affects river fish populations. Their results paint a clear picture of the impacts of intensive human activity on river ecosystems.
“Overall, urbanisation and human population density most frequently lead to a significant decrease in fish populations,” says lead author Rafaela Schinegger, Assistant Professor for Nature Conservation Planning at BOKU in Austria. “In Europe, urban land use was also identified as the most severe stressor, whilst in the USA, we more often identified agricultural land use as the most severe one.”
Urbanisation and intensive agriculture can cause a wide range of stressors on river ecosystems. Urban land development around rivers often leads to habitat loss, alterations to water flows, barriers to fish movement and increased risk of pollution and flooding. Intensive agriculture can generate a similar range of threats, often with a heightened risk of fertiliser pollution, increased demands for water abstraction, and clearing of riparian ecosystems.
The characteristics of different fish species impacted how they responded to stressors. As might be expected, species which are particularly sensitive to changes in water quality and habitat loss were strongly affected by urbanisation and agricultural stressors.
“Our study showed that fish species intolerant to habitat degradation in general, including water quality impairments and hydro-morphological changes such as channel alteration, barriers and spawning habitat loss are the most responsive and sensitive traits over a wide range of ecoregions and across continents,” says lead author Maria Magdalena Üblacker from IGB Berlin in Germany.
Species which rely on gravel and rocky areas of river bottom to spawn – so-called ‘lithophilic’ species – were similarly sensitive to stressors in both European and USA rivers. This is likely due to the loss of suitable spawning grounds due to human development.
In the USA, two more characteristics in fish species made them particularly susceptible to stressors. Migratory fish and species which live in fast-flowing water – so-called ‘rheophilic’ species – were also strongly affected by human activity. These species are likely to be vulnerable to river flow barriers and habitat alterations resulting from human development.
The research team used the huge dataset on European and USA rivers to identify ‘threshold’ values at which human stressors had a significant effect on fish populations. “The identified thresholds can provide guidance for prevention, conservation, and restoration of riverine fish habitats,” says Maria Magdalena Üblacker. “Our study also provides evidence about the urge to analyze interconnections between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and their implications for future nature conservation planning,” continues Rafaela Schinegger.
“Our work shows the value of international collaborations among institutions, as well as the supportive and productive relationships among our author team,” says lead author Dana Infante, a Professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University. “Our results for Europe and the USA clearly indicate that a landscape scale approach and the reduction of stressors in urbanised areas have to be a focus for management.”
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Biodiversity in European rivers increased between 1968 and 2010 due to improved water quality following decades of environmental pollution, according to a new study. However, this trend of biodiversity recovery has stalled since 2010.
Writing in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers attribute this finding to the limited potential of existing measures to continue to drive water quality improvements. This is due to the growing impacts of complex stressors such as climate change, which need to be urgently tackled with ambitious new environmental restoration and policy strategies, the authors argue.
“Our data show that rivers can indeed recover if we as a society take the right measures,” said co-author Professor Sonja Jähnig from the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). “However, we have hardly made any progress in the state of biodiversity since 2010, so additional efforts are needed today.”
The researchers examined invertebrate records to trace the history of freshwater biodiversity in European rivers. Invertebrates such as mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies are crucial to healthy freshwater ecosystems, and have been extensively studied in water quality monitoring programmes. The research team analysed 1,816 studies of invertebrate communities collected across 22 European countries between 1968 and 2020.
“Invertebrates such as mayflies or caddisflies have long been a pillar for monitoring water quality, so we were able to draw on a very good database,” said lead author Professor Peter Haase from the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt. “These data also show that a stagnation set in after 2010, which indicates that the measures taken so far have been exhausted.”
Rivers across Europe were extensively polluted through industrial, agricultural and urban expansion through the 20th century. In response, governments began to take action to tackle the poor water quality of many rivers by adopting measures to reduce pollution and acidification from the 1970s onwards. These measures – including better wastewater treatment – drove slow but steady improvements in water quality across the continent, which were further supported by legislation such as the EU Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (1991) and Water Framework Directive (2000).
The new study suggests that biodiversity recovery in European rivers as a result of better water quality has plateaued in the last decade, and ambitious new measures are needed to continue ecological restoration in the face of complex and ever-changing environmental threats.
“The improvement of freshwater biodiversity in Europe is a great achievement, but we cannot afford to be complacent,” said co-author Professor Iwan Jones, Head of the River Communities Group at the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary University of London. “Our research shows that we need to redouble our efforts to protect these vital ecosystems. We need to act now to further reduce pollution, prevent invasive species from spreading, and help our river systems to cope with climate change.”
Rivers in heavily urban or agricultural catchments – and those downstream of dams – showed the lowest improvements in biodiversity in the study period. Further, rivers already significantly affected by climate change had lower rates of biodiversity improvements – a trend that is likely to accelerate as temperatures increase and climate extremes become more common in the future.
“The fact that biodiversity recovers less in some rivers is due to the fact that downstream of urban areas, micropollutants and nutrients enter the watercourses, and cities are also often gateways for alien invasive species,” said co-author Dr Sami Domisch from IGB. “On the other hand, fine sediments, pesticides and fertilisers are more likely to be washed into the watercourses from farmland. And dams fragment water bodies and change the flow and temperature regimes.”
The study is published at a time of intense political negotiation over the future of Europe’s biodiversity. The European Union is currently preparing to launch its new Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, aiming to halt the loss of biodiversity and restore degraded ecosystems. And following months of debate, the EU Nature Restoration Law is nearing official finalisation.
Crucially, the study suggests that existing environmental legislation has not responded to emerging threats such as climate change, which has caused freshwater biodiversity recovery to stagnate. As a result, there is the pressing need to tailor ambitious new policies to the realities of the contemporary environment, and couple them with extensive restoration projects to help continue the recovery of Europe’s rivers in the future.
“It is no longer enough to improve water quality; we need to restore ecosystems on a large scale and fundamentally improve the connectivity of European watercourses,” said Prof Jähnig. “This would not only boost aquatic biodiversity, but would also support natural flood protection, water retention in the landscape and the self-purification capacity of water bodies.”
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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.
Microplastic pollution in freshwater lakes can reach levels that exceed those in the infamous ‘floating garbage patch’ ocean gyres, according to a new study. Microplastics are found in lakes and reservoirs all over the world, the study found, even in remote and mountainous locations.
The study, led by Dr. Veronica Nava and published in Nature, assessed plastic pollution in 38 lakes and reservoirs across six continents, each subject to different environmental conditions. They found microplastics – small fragments of plastic from clothing, packaging and other products – at all study sites.
Two types of lakes were found to be particularly vulnerable to microplastic pollution. First, those in densely populated and urbanised areas where human activity is intensive. Second, those with large watersheds, shorelines and water inflows, where plastic pollution has numerous routes to reach a lake across a wide area, and where water is retained for a long period of time.
“Our results provide the first comprehensive picture of microplastic pollution in lakes,” said co-author Professor Hans-Peter Grossart from IGB. “They highlight the importance of including lakes and reservoirs in the fight against microplastic pollution for pollution management and continued provision of lake ecosystem services.”
Polyester, polypropylene and polyethylene were the most common microplastics found by researchers, but the plastic ‘signature’ of each lake differed. Microplastics were found at high concentrations in some of the most remote sites in the study, including Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada.
“The mechanism of transport of these plastics is not clear, especially when we talk about very small fragments or textile fibres,” said Dr. Nava. “We are wearing a lot of synthetic clothes, the majority of which are made of polyester, and they end up in aquatic systems. Even from far away, there can be atmospheric circulation and patterns that can carry these plastics a long way.”
Forty-five percent of the lakes studied contained more than one plastic particle per cubic metre of water, whilst the most polluted lakes had more than ten particles per cubic metre. The researchers state that concentrations of microplastics in Lakes Lugano and Maggiore at the Swiss-Italian Border and Lake Tahoe in the USA exceed those in ‘floating garbage patch’ oceanic gyres where huge rafts of plastic waste accumulates.
The findings have important implications for drinking water provision. Some of the lakes found to have high plastic concentrations – including Lake Maggiore, Lake Tahoe and Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland – are valuable sources of drinking water.
However, these large lakes often have high water ‘residence times’, meaning that water stays in the system for long periods of time – in Lake Tahoe this can be as high as 650 years. This means that the lakes can act as sinks for plastic pollution which is not flushed out and so accumulates in the system.
This finding presents significant challenges to water managers seeking to provide safe, clean drinking water to communities. It also is a valuable insight for the growing network of freshwater restoration scientists seeking to use nature-based solutions to help improve drinking water quality for humans.
Widespread microplastic pollution also has implications for freshwater ecosystems and even climate change. “Plastic that accumulates on the surface of aquatic systems can promote the release of methane and other greenhouse gases,” explained Dr. Nava. “Plastics can reach beyond the hydrosphere and interact with the atmosphere, biosphere and lithosphere, potentially affecting biogeochemical cycles, including the circulation between the various compartments of the earth of chemical elements that pass from living matter to inorganic matter through chemical transformations and reactions, through mechanisms that have yet to be understood and require a holistic assessment of plastic pollution in lentic [freshwater] systems.”
Microplastic pollution has been emerging as an environmental issue in recent years, as global society produces around 400 million tonnes of plastic waste each year, and plastic fibres have been documented on both the highest mountain ranges and deepest ocean trenches. The study by Dr. Nava and colleagues is valuable in documenting the startling extent of microplastic pollution in lakes and reservoirs.
Moreover, the study – along with another by Dr. Hudson Pinheiro and colleagues about microplastic pollution on coral reefs in the same issue of Nature – contributes to ongoing discussions at the United Nations over a new treaty to eliminate plastic pollution. Talks over a new plastic treaty began in March 2022 and are due to conclude in 2024.
This fast-track timescale offers only a short window for scientists to make their voices heard in negotiations. These studies provide timely documents of the magnitude and extent of global plastic pollution, and reminders of the urgent need to tackle it, both for people and nature.
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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.
The Tisza River flows nearly a thousand kilometres from its source in Ukraine through Hungary to meet the Danube in Serbia. In places, the Tisza supports rich and varied biodiversity, particularly bird species, mayflies and floodplain meadows. However, the Tisza’s course and floodplains have been altered for well over a century through dam construction, dredging and channel straightening.
The EU-funded MERLIN project is supporting the restoration of the Tisza river at two sites close to the village of Nagykörű in Hungary. Floodplains surrounding the river – which have been drained and cut off from the river to support intensive arable farming – are being ‘rewetted’. This process is intended to increase water retention in the floodplains, which will help buffer floodwaters and create valuable biodiversity habitat. In turn, the plan is for the rewetted Tisza floodplains to support more sustainable farming practices.
Last month, scientists from across Europe visited the restoration sites for a MERLIN field visit to learn about ongoing work on the Tisza. Over three days, the scientists visited the restoration areas to see progress, and to undertake wider discussions around the restoration projects supported by MERLIN on large river sites across the continent.
Reporting back on the meeting, project co-ordinator Dr. Sebastian Birk suggested this vision involves significant changes to how the Tisza floodplains are managed. “A major transformation in thinking is needed,” Dr. Birk explained. “This means the farmers living along the river changing their business model from cash crop cultivation – which needs to be protected from flooding – towards more sustainable farming practices which can work even when periodically flooded.”
Such a major shift in how the Tisza floodplains are managed and used requires close cooperation with local communities. “The restoration managers have this big idea and they are increasingly communicating their narrative of how the river and its floodplains will look in the future,” Dr. Birk outlined. “And they wanted us as MERLINers to meet the local people there and the stakeholders to learn about their perspectives. The level of understanding has massively increased through these meetings which is very nice to see.”
More broadly, Dr. Birk highlighted how large river restoration projects like those on the Tisza are often very complicated and time-consuming to carry out. “Large rivers are often more in the public perception, which can help a project because local communities and stakeholders are often aware of them and the issues they face,” he said. “On the other hand, restoring a large river involves focusing on certain stretches and areas. These are often the most modified or ecologically valuable areas, and are often only several kilometres in length at best. This means joining up the work of such restoration projects across a large river is a major challenge.
“And then there is the challenge of the integrating the different stages of these projects along a river. Some are well established and some are only just beginning. Think about Room for the River in the Netherlands – a long standing program that has already reached so many goals, especially around the main focus of flood protection. But this program has already started more than twenty-five years ago,” Dr. Birk said.
This means that for the restoration of large rivers such as the Tisza is invariably a slow process. “The original ideas for the Tisza restoration date back years, but this work is still only piloting,” Dr. Birk explained. “The temporal dimension is just huge for these kind of transformative actions. So never expect something to happen quickly especially when there is no top-down government initiatives supporting restoration.”
You can find out more about the Tisza River floodplain restoration in a factsheet and article. You can find out more about how MERLIN is supporting large river restoration across Europe in our podcast recorded last summer on the banks of the River Rhine.
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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.
Nature-based solutions are increasingly being adopted by environmental managers and policy makers seeking to address the growing ecological and climate emergencies, both in Europe and globally. Nature-based solutions – such as peatland and river restoration – aim to use natural processes to help tackle socio-environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and flooding.
One key element of nature-based solutions is that they are designed to offer clear economic and social rationales for the value of protecting and restoring natural environments. Advocates of nature-based solutions suggest that this helps strengthen arguments over the value of mainstreaming environmental restoration to benefit all our lives.
In this context, a newly-published open-access paper explores whether nature-based solutions can make meaningful contributions to tackling the freshwater biodiversity crisis. Writing in PLOS Water, Dr. Charles van Rees and colleagues highlight how nature-based solutions can offer ‘win-wins’ for nature and society, but emphasise that clear links must be made between their use and priorities for freshwater conservation.
We spoke to Dr. van Rees to find out more about the research.
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Tell us about your paper: what are the key take-away points, and why do they matter?
I would highlight several take-home points from the paper. First, the notion which inspired the paper itself: everyone – from governments to NGO’s to private consultants – is getting really excited about nature-based solutions (or NBS). And that’s not a bad thing. But as we approach implementation of NBS on a massive scale, we have to make sure we’re doing these projects the right way. Part of the appeal of these projects is ostensibly their potential to benefit biodiversity. However, at the moment, this seems mostly unsubstantiated; people are happy to pay lip-service to what NBS could be doing for biodiversity but in our enthusiasm we have failed to take a critical stance toward these claims. The paper set out to test those claims for freshwater biodiversity, the most imperilled realm of biodiversity, since a great number of NBS address freshwater management issues.
The second take home point is regarding what we found when we started digging into the literature: very little! Although there is an increasing amount written on NBS, there has been very little biodiversity monitoring of NBS projects. Thus, most evidence is indirect, and we had to conduct our analyses largely in a qualitative manner. The major message here is that we need to start rounding up the available evidence on the biodiversity impacts of common NBS, and collecting new evidence as these projects become increasingly mainstream.
The last major take-home comes from our qualitative findings. Namely, that NBS can make big contributions to some, but not all, of the major priority actions for freshwater biodiversity conservation. In other words, they do show great promise, but will not be a panacea. For things like facilitating environmental flows, creating and restoring habitat, and improving water quality and ecological and hydrological connectivity, NBS seem like they could make a major impact, especially if implemented at scale. For other issues, the potential is more indirect and would be appropriate for a supporting role, but we would still need to find ways to specifically and directly address those conservation issues in other ways.
Why is it so important to critically examine the role of NBS in freshwater conservation and restoration right now?
In the US and elsewhere, interest, momentum, and funding for NBS projects are building rapidly. They are an urgently needed solution to many major problems of the anthropocene, particularly dealing with global climate change and water-related existential risks like drought and flooding. At the same time, freshwater biodiversity is in crisis. That makes coming decades, where huge amounts of money are invested into water-management infrastructure, a critical time for freshwater biodiversity. If NBS can be deployed at scale and in ways that support biodiversity conservation goals like those put forth by David Tickner and colleagues, then the benefits could be massive.
Based on your research, do you think NBS deliver on their potential for freshwater biodiversity conservation, whilst also benefiting society?
I think NBS can absolutely deliver on both of the major ‘promises’ that people are excitedly making right now. However, it will require interdisciplinary knowledge integrated across sectors and levels of management – for example, from scientific expertise to local, indigenous, and other traditional expertise – and rigorous monitoring to ensure that this is the case. We see great potential for NBS to contribute to freshwater conservation goals like increasing connectivity, improving water quality, and generating habitat, for example. Other major goals like reducing the impacts of invasive species may be less directly related to freshwater NBS.
In your paper, you link freshwater NBS with six priority actions for freshwater biodiversity conservation. Why was this important to do, and what potential does it offer environmental managers and policy makers?
David Ticker and colleagues’ priority actions, and the complementary, cross-cutting Special Recommendations by myself and colleagues both outline strategic priorities that need to be addressed to ‘bend the curve’ for freshwater biodiversity, that is, slow and perhaps even reverse ongoing declines. In critically examining the promise of NBS for freshwater biodiversity, we wanted to ground their potential contributions to biodiversity conservation issues in a-priori categories of conservation action.
We hope that linking to these important 21st-century freshwater conservation papers and their highlighted priorities will help guide biodiversity research on NBS to focus on topic areas with maximal potential positive impact. I think the major potential for environmental managers and policy makers is in making them aware of what specific contributions they can expect to be making toward conservation goals. In planning and negotiations for projects, it’s important that they know what NBS can and can’t do, and what types of benefits are within the realm of possibility.
Finally, what knowledge gaps and other challenges need to be addressed to better apply freshwater NBS in the future?
The knowledge gaps around NBS and biodiversity are frankly huge. This means that funding must be made available for rigorous scientific monitoring of biodiversity in restored, artificial, and protected ecosystems functioning as NBS. This has a lot in common with ongoing work on novel ecosystems, and papers like our recent framework for monitoring natural infrastructure will be necessary to ensure that we learn as we go, and don’t proceed blindly with burgeoning enthusiasm for NBS. Beyond that, since biodiversity is different everywhere, more regional knowledge is needed to enable successful implementation outside of the areas from which most of the current research is coming.
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The future of the EU Nature Restoration Law (NRL) was cast in doubt last week as negotiations over its adoption stalled.
The NRL – proposed last year – is a key component of the European Green Deal, and includes legally binding targets to restore degraded ecosystems and the biodiversity and carbon stores they support. The NRL aims to cover at least 20% of the EU’s land and seas with nature restoration measures by 2030, and to address all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050. It aims to scale up existing measures such as reforestation, river restoration, greening cities and reducing pollution to restore European ecosystems and the benefits they provide to society.
However, last week, the European People’s Party (EPP) walked out of negotiations, stating that the proposed NRL threatens the EU’s long-term food security. The NRL now enters a critical phase, as the Environment (ENVI) Committee of the European Parliament will vote on the compromise amendments this Thursday 15th June, and the Council will adopt its final position on the 20th June.
In response, environmental scientists, businesses, progressive agriculture communities and NGOs across Europe have mobilised in an attempt to save the NRL. The EPP’s attempts to stop the adoption of the NRL are based on the argument that it places an unfair burden on farmers, who would be required, for example, to reduce pesticide usage and set aside land for environmental restoration.
An open letter by scientists including MERLIN project coordinator Daniel Hering rebuffs these claims about the NRL, and the related Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR). They address six key points, providing evidence to show that the legislation is essential for protecting European food security and sovereignty, boosting fisheries, creating new employment opportunities, and providing a more sustainable model for nature-based economies.
“If successful, both regulations [the NRL and SUR] will be cornerstones of future food security, human health and biodiversity conservation,” said Prof. Hering in an OPPLA blog post. “For the first time, the Nature Restoration Law sets binding targets for the restoration of marine and urban ecosystems, drained peatlands, floodplains and forests. Unfortunately, the current debate is driven by misinformation that are likely to terminate both regulations.
“Our letter addresses the questions, if the regulations are likely to reduce agricultural production, to harm marine fisheries, to cut jobs, to be a burden to the society and if it will be too risky in times of war,” continued Prof. Hering. “Scientific evidence suggests that all these claims are incorrect.”
Another open letter has been published by 207 civil society organisations through the #RestoreNature campaign. This letter – which is signed by major NGOs including Greenpeace, Rewilding Europe and WWF – focuses on the need for a strong NRL as a means of urgently tackling twin biodiversity and climate crises.
The #RestoreNature campaign asks members of the public to sign a petition in support of the NRL ahead of the crucial vote on Thursday. Their letter highlights the pioneering restoration projects across Europe which are already helping restore biodiversity, providing natural flood protection and creating jobs, amongst other benefits.
Their letter states: “When given a chance, and with a helping hand, nature has a remarkable ability to bounce back. Restoring nature means restoring our greatest ally in tackling the climate and biodiversity crises, restoring our health and overall well-being, and restoring the resilience of our economies.”
The #RestoreNature campaign calls on national governments, Members of the European Parliament and the European Commission to adopt the NRL by the end of 2023, and to ensure that large-scale environmental restoration is happening across the continent by 2030. It asks that strong nature restoration targets are set to match the extent and urgency of the biodiversity and climate crises, and met by 2040 at the latest.
The proposed NRL represents a critical element of the European Green Deal, and offers an invaluable opportunity to take ambitious and effective action to restore Europe’s ecosystems, to ensure that nature can continue to support sustainably support our lives. More broadly, it is crucial for reaching the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed last year. Under this agreement, the world’s nations (including the EU) to restore at least 30% of their degraded habitats by 2030.
You can sign the #RestoreNature petition in support of the EU Nature Restoration Law here.
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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.
On World Peatlands Day 2023 we’re delighted to bring you the third episode of the MERLIN podcast.
Peatlands and wetlands are vital landscapes. They store carbon and so help mitigate the harmful effects of climate change, they help buffer floodwaters and naturally filter drinking water, and they are often rich habitats for biodiversity. But peatlands and wetlands have been widely drained, altered and lost across Europe as a result of human actions.
This episode explores how peatlands and wetlands across the continent are being restored through a series of ambitious projects supported by the MERLIN project. Podcast host Rob St John meets a range of restoration scientists and managers implementing so-called ‘nature-based solutions‘ at their sites across Europe. Their schemes include beaver reintroduction, peatland ‘rewetting’ and wet woodland restoration.
We also hear from MERLIN project coordinator Dr Sebastian Birk on the need for fresh thinking around how to finance restoration schemes. Dr Birk discusses the challenges of accounting for factors such as carbon storage when assessing the benefits that restoration can bring to society.
You can also listen and subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Amazon, and Apple Podcasts. Stay tuned for the next episode soon!
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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.
Sturgeons were once so highly prized in the UK that in 1324, King Edward II declared them a ‘royal fish’. However, decades of overfishing, habitat loss and blocked migration routes have caused sturgeons to almost completely disappear from UK rivers and coastlines.
This population decline is not an isolated trend: the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considers sturgeons the most critically endangered group of species on Earth. Across Europe, conservationists are seeking to implement large-scale plans to bring back sturgeon populations from the brink along major rivers such as the Danube.
This week, a team of conservationists led by the Zoological Society of London have launched an ambitious plan to restore populations of Atlantic and European sturgeons to UK waters. The UK Sturgeon Conservation and Action Plan aims to help restore sturgeon habitat and migration passages whilst reducing accidental bycatch. It forms part of major Europe-wide restoration initiatives to help save critically endangered European sturgeons from the brink of extinction.
“Growing up to 5m in length, with long whisker-like barbels and diamond-shaped armoured plates along their backs, sturgeons look like they’ve swum straight out of a palaeontologist’s textbook,” said Hannah McCormick from ZSL. “These impressive and ancient animals were once common in UK rivers and along our coastline, so it’s hardly surprising that they were declared ‘royal fish’ by King Edward II back in the 14th Century.
“Fast-forward seven hundred years, and sturgeons have all but disappeared from our waters, after dam construction in rivers blocking their migration routes and overfishing caused numbers to plummet in the latter half of the 20th century,” McCormick explained.
Both species of sturgeon native to the UK – European and Atlantic – are migratory. They are born in rivers, before migrating downstream to the sea, where they live most of their lives – which can stretch more than 60 years – returning to freshwater every few years to reproduce. This means that restoration efforts need to take into account the wide range of habitats that they pass through, and the numerous people and organisations responsible for their management.
As a result, the new action plan has five key goals. First, to map essential sturgeon habitats and migration routes across UK marine, estuarine and freshwaters to identify areas for restoration and protection from threats. Second, to boost European sturgeon restoration projects – particularly the Pan-European Action Plan for Sturgeons – by supporting UK sturgeon population recovery. Third, to minimise accidental sturgeon bycatch by working with marine fishers.
Fourth, the action plan aims to engage political and public audiences to actively support sturgeon restoration efforts. It highlights the role of sturgeons as ‘flagship species’ which draw attention to wider aquatic conservation issues. Finally, it aims to close evidence gaps around sturgeon populations by supporting scientific research which helps underpin conservation decision-making.
The action plan was created by the UK Sturgeon Alliance – a group of research organisations and NGOs formed in 2020 which works to restore native sturgeon populations. The Alliance have set up a website – Save the Sturgeon – where the public can report sturgeon sightings to help researchers better understand their population dynamics.
“The development of this Action Plan has been an exciting first step that contributes to the European efforts of restoring sturgeons,” said Jenny Murray from the Blue Marine Foundation, a member of the UK Sturgeon Alliance. “This has been a truly collaborative approach that has highlighted the interest and need to see habitats in a good enough condition for their return. The public can support sturgeons return by raising awareness of this beautiful species and reporting any sightings to the Save the Sturgeon website.”
“We now have over 5,200 records of sturgeon in rivers, estuaries and coastal waters all around the UK, since at least 1700, added Steve Colclough from the Institute of Fisheries Management, another member of the member of the UK Sturgeon Alliance. “Our waters clearly formed part of the natural range of these great migrators. Until recently, the numbers visiting us have been so low that these were only recognised as occasional vagrants. In the 18th and 19th century many fish were captured in our rivers and in some cases where they were not offered to the crown, they were removed and destroyed as strange exotic sea monsters. Now we know better, we can help conserve these flagship species for future generations to see.”
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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.
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