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Healthy rivers depend not just on what happens in the river valley, but on how land is managed across the whole catchment.
Rainfall interacts with farmland long before it reaches rivers – soaking through soil into groundwater or flowing overland into ditches and streams.
Every decision about cropping, cultivating, irrigating and stocking livestock influences the health of our rivers. Thoughtful land, water and habitat management helps ensure clean water, thriving wildlife and resilient farms.
Our Farming and Land Management Team work directly with farmers and landowners across the Norfolk and Cam and Ely Ouse river catchments to protect and restore our freshwater environments, while ensuring that farm productivity and viability is maintained.
We provide funded, confidential advice alongside flexible, bespoke funding opportunities to support farms with practical measures. Our work focuses primarily on improving soil health, increasing water and nutrient retention, preventing soil erosion and enhancing farmland biodiversity.
By promoting nature-based solutions, we help to build more resilient landscapes that safeguard the future of farming businesses in an increasingly uncertain climate.
Our team can deliver a wide range of advice and interventions tailored to each farm. Initially, we highlight potential risks before identifying opportunities to mitigate and alleviate these. We explore practical measures, including:
We also work with landowners and communities to deliver natural flood management features, such as leaky log dams, v-notch weirs, bunds, large wood material and attenuation features. Funding is available through partnerships with leading organisations, including WWF-UK, Carlsberg Britvic, National Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
These collaborations enable us to provide bespoke grants and deliver real improvements on farms, achieving wider catchment-scale benefits for rivers and water resources.
Since our establishment in 2012, we have worked with hundreds of landowners to enhance over 3,700 hectares of land, replenish more than 4.4 billion litres of water and restore around 10km of river habitat.* These efforts demonstrate how individual actions on land contribute to healthier rivers, and support both nature and farming during a time of increasing climate pressures and resource scarcity.
*Figures reflect progress achieved up to the end of 2024.
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