Sep 24, 2026 · 53 min · 9 segments
Tree Amble went to meet Jonny in Yorkshire where we walked a stretch of stream which had undergone restoration - fencing off stock, tree planting and in stream work - with his help and where outcomes…
So describe for me then what, so there's a reach here and you've done lots of different activities on here.
What sort of things are you doing then to bring these rivers back into, let's say, moderate health rather than pristine health, because they're not pristine, are they, but moderate health.
What can you do as an organisation or as a landowner or whatever to actually start to re-engineer some features in that work for nature?
A lot of engineering has gone on in the past to straighten this and to sort of place the banks into sort of uniform 30 degree slopes.
And the tree cover that we see, I mean, it looks fantastic as a from a cursory glance but all of these trees are of an age.
They clearly went in or managed to establish themselves at a moment in time and then there's actually not that much beneath them to replenish that stock as these older specimens begin to fail.
I think one of the key things here because of the straightened nature of it is to try and slow the flow within the channel and so we can use some of the failed ash tree for example we can see one in the distance there various limbs have been taken down from a safety perspective because there is a footpath right next to the beck here and we've used instead of carting those off and taking them out of the system we've actually retained them within the channel in many instances to slow the flow and that helps to create localised scour and deposition, so it aids trapping the gravel within the channel.
two processes going, you kind of almost increase the flow at one point to deepen it, and then once that flow loses energy it starts to deposit that smaller gravel.
And the deeper part that you mentioned is obviously really good for the adult fish as well.
Instead of the current uniformity of this relatively homogenous straight glide section, we're looking for deeper pools, shallow riffles, few glides interspersed.
So you've done that, so you've put some of the dead ash limbs in there to create that kind of habitat.
It is a working farming landscape and the farmer needs to cross the beck at this point.
He doesn't come across here very regularly, so it wouldn't make sense to put a clear span bridge in or anything like that, especially with the weight of kit that he needs.
and prior to us doing any work the cascade of water going over the edge of the ford had essentially eroded the downstream side and was actually undercutting back underneath the ford so making it a fairly perilous journey it would have collapsed probably by now if we'd not done anything So rather than take out the ford, we've retained the ford and we've put in a lot of large boulders on the downstream side.
So describe for me then what, so there's a reach here and you've done lots of different activities on here.
What sort of things are you doing then to bring these rivers back into, let's say, moderate health rather than pristine health, because they're not pristine, are they, but moderate health.
What can you do as an organisation or as a landowner or whatever to actually start to re-engineer some features in that work for nature?
A lot of engineering has gone on in the past to straighten this and to sort of place the banks into sort of uniform 30 degree slopes.
And the tree cover that we see, I mean, it looks fantastic as a from a cursory glance but all of these trees are of an age.
They clearly went in or managed to establish themselves at a moment in time and then there's actually not that much beneath them to replenish that stock as these older specimens begin to fail.
I think one of the key things here because of the straightened nature of it is to try and slow the flow within the channel and so we can use some of the failed ash tree for example we can see one in the distance there various limbs have been taken down from a safety perspective because there is a footpath right next to the beck here and we've used instead of carting those off and taking them out of the system we've actually retained them within the channel in many instances to slow the flow and that helps to create localised scour and deposition, so it aids trapping the gravel within the channel.
two processes going, you kind of almost increase the flow at one point to deepen it, and then once that flow loses energy it starts to deposit that smaller gravel.
And the deeper part that you mentioned is obviously really good for the adult fish as well.
Instead of the current uniformity of this relatively homogenous straight glide section, we're looking for deeper pools, shallow riffles, few glides interspersed.
So you've done that, so you've put some of the dead ash limbs in there to create that kind of habitat.
It is a working farming landscape and the farmer needs to cross the beck at this point.
He doesn't come across here very regularly, so it wouldn't make sense to put a clear span bridge in or anything like that, especially with the weight of kit that he needs.
and prior to us doing any work the cascade of water going over the edge of the ford had essentially eroded the downstream side and was actually undercutting back underneath the ford so making it a fairly perilous journey it would have collapsed probably by now if we'd not done anything So rather than take out the ford, we've retained the ford and we've put in a lot of large boulders on the downstream side.
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