Founded in 1995, The Westcountry Rivers Trust (WRT) is a charity and waterway society created to further the protection and enhancement of the rivers of south-west England. One of its most prominent initiatives was the Cornwall Rivers Project (CRP) – which, with £2.6m funding from the European Union and DEFRA, was aimed at managing the landscape and catchment areas of various Cornish rivers and streams.
Staff from the WRT visited 870 landholdings over the course of the project, delivering tailor made land-management plans that identified improvements to farming practice that would protect the environment while making economic savings for the landowner.
The Trust also set up eight demonstration sites, and delivered educational courses in schools and colleges in order to explain the CRP’s directives and the importance of habitat maintenance and restoration for the areas’ wildlife and economy.
Over the four years that the CRP ran, a total land area of 56,000 hectares was covered, incorporating 1,380km (862miles) of watercourse. It certainly sounds like a job well done.