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- Rivers in Europe are heavily fragmented. There are thousands of unused and unwanted dams and artificial barriers around Europe, vestiges of human activities of the past century. They are destroying the health of rivers, impacting freshwater biodiversity, posing increasing risk to communities and undermining climate resilience.
environment.ec.europa.eu/news/restoring-european-rivers-win-win-scenario-humans-and-nature-2023-10-18_enRestoring European rivers: A win-win scenario for humans and ...
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Mar 5, 2024 · Artificial barriers have long blocked Europe's waterways. But as many of these structures age, a movement is growing to let rivers flow freely once again.
Aug 16, 2023 · A record number of dams and weirs were removed from Europe’s rivers in 2022, helping to restore the health of the continent’s freshwater arteries. The annual report from Dam Removal Europe (DRE), an alliance of seven wildlife and environmental organizations, shows that 325 obstacles were taken down across rivers in 16 countries, improving ...
- Douglas Broom
May 1, 2023 · There is an estimated 150,000 old and unused dams and weirs across Europe. Restoring at least 25,000 km of rivers to a free-flowing rivers is one of the aims of The European Union Biodiversity...
Jul 19, 2021 · This is because rivers that should be free-flowing are broken up by barriers like hydroelectric dams: according to a recent EEA briefing, these river barriers in Europe are one of the leading causes of more than an 80% decline in freshwater biodiversity and the loss of 55% of monitored migratory fish populations.
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The Yecla de Yeltes Dam in western Spain supplied drinking water to local communities for half a century, until newer projects rendered it obsolete. Its demolition this month is the biggest dam-removal project in the European Union so far — and is being hailed by ecologists as a milestone for river-restoration efforts in the continent.
Such efforts are ramping up in many European countries — although some, notably those in the Balkan Peninsula, are on a dam-building spree. An initiative has begun to take the first continent-wide census of all dams. And although dam removal is generally welcomed by most scientists, some call for more research into potential ill effects.
Hundreds of thousands of dams and weirs, most small and many no longer in use, fragment Europe’s rivers. The structures, some of them thousands of years old, have provided irrigation, energy and other benefits. But their presence also threatens the habitats of endemic fish and wildlife.
“Dams alter the natural characteristics of a river system,” says Jeroen van Herk, a project manager with Dam Removal Europe, a group that promotes river restoration in the continent. “Long stretches of rivers, which once flowed freely from source to outlet, become a series of pools, hindering migrating fish from reaching spawning grounds in the upper reaches.”
The Yecla de Yeltes is on the Huebra River, a 122-kilometre-long tributary of the Duero, which is one of the Iberian Peninsula’s main rivers. Ecologists suspect that the 22-metre-tall dam, built in 1958, is partly responsible for the observed decline of the small freshwater fish called the sarda (Achondrostoma salmantinum), along with that of other endemic species, including otters and black storks (Ciconia nigra), which were once abundant in the area. Scientists in Spain are set to monitor whether the animals come back after the dam is removed.
•Dam removals: Rivers on the run
•Fish return to undammed Elwha RiverJobs
- Quirin Schiermeier
- 2018
May 16, 2022 · More than 200 dams were removed from Europe’s rivers last year - but some 150,000 obstacles still clog up the continent’s waterways. A record-breaking 239 barriers, dams and weirs were removed...
Sep 1, 2023 · Removal of a 94 metre-wide and 4 metre-high dam, reconnecting 67 kilometres of river to restore fish migration in a protected natural area. The project demonstrated the strong positive effect on biodiversity. Rivers recover quickly when dams are removed and the species that live in them flourish.
