It's time to rescue our rivers

By Charlotte Owen

Conservation Manager

Water. Where would we be without it? The truth is, we probably wouldn’t be at all. Water is the key to life on our beautiful blue planet and most of it is salty, with the vast ocean holding 97% of all water on Earth. Freshwater is relatively scarce and nearly all of it is locked away in glaciers and ice caps or under the ground. Only a tiny fraction is accessible on the surface in freshwater ponds, rivers, lakes and wetlands, making water a truly precious resource.

Sussex is home to some stunning and unique wetland landscapes, from coastal saltmarsh to reedbeds, chalk streams, wet heathlands, ancient floodplain woodlands and sandstone gills. These wet and watery places are magnets for wildlife, from Water Voles to Reed Warblers, Otters and amphibians: drinking, bathing, swimming, feeding, breeding, lurking, hunting and living.

But this water also has to supply a growing population of people, and demand keeps growing. Sussex is a water stressed region, meaning we’re already using a high proportion of the water available to us, and the pressures on our rivers and wetlands are immense. Across the UK, we’ve already lost 90% of our wetland habitats in the past 100 years and our rivers are in a shocking state. The UK is ranked as one of the worst countries in Europe for water quality, with pollution beyond legal limits caused by a toxic cocktail of sewage and agricultural pollution. In 2023 alone, raw sewage was discharged into UK waterways more than 580,000 times. This is not how we should be treating our most vital natural resource.

This is a crisis. Our rivers are no longer suitable homes for wildlife, our waterways are not fit for people to swim in, and our water supplies are dwindling. We’re calling on the government to put an end to river pollution and unsustainable water use, to secure a sustainable supply of safe drinking water, restore healthy rivers and wetlands, and embrace nature-based solutions to flooding and drought.

We’ll be joining thousands of people at the March For Clean Water on Sunday 3 November to demand government action to end pollution of our rivers, lakes and sea. Please join us if you can – register here