Lottery cash will help to safeguard rivers’ future

THE River Arun is readying itself to share a potential slice of almost £1million of funding which could help to preserve the waterway’s fragile eco-system and combat future droughts.
By The Newsroom
Published 21st Apr 2012, 07:00 BST

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has agreed to pledge £114,900 of so-called development funding for both the rivers Arun and Rother, which flow through Pulborough.

The funding has been awarded to the Arun and Rother Connections: Linking Landscape and Community (ARC) project which is a partnership made up of the RSPB, Environment Agency, Sussex Wildlife Trust, South Downs National Park Authority, Natural England, West Sussex County Council and the new Arun and Rother Rivers Trust.

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This means that plans can now be developed for a full, three-year programme of work worth more than £2million to, hopefully, begin in 2013. This includes plans to apply for a full HLF grant of £990,000 for the project.

Steve Gilbert, conservation programme manager for the RSPB, which led on submitting the bid, said: “This is a very exciting opportunity to enhance the environment of these wonderful rivers on a large scale.

“We still need to work up a lot of detail before we can ask the lottery to make a grant towards putting our plans into practice, but if we succeed this will lead to really important improvements for the benefit of wildlife and people, both local residents and visitors.”

If successful, the project will improve river habitats for a wide variety of wetland wildlife, help the movement of fish up and down the rivers – by removing obstructions such as redundant weirs – and help control invasive non-native species that threaten native wildlife. The project will also help to encourage people to take a greater role in managing the water to help limit the impact of future droughts.

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Fran Southgate, Sussex Wildlife Trust wetlands officer, said: “Water is an incredibly undervalued substance. We are suffering from some major problems with our watery environment at the moment – including droughts, floods, climate change and pollution. We hope this project will help bring together everyone who is involved with managing water and that it will help them find some inspiring solutions to some of these bigger challenges.”

Related topics:RSPB