Big Green Give: Love Windermere are fundraising to plant reed beds and cleanup water

Love Windermere is fundraising as part of the Big Green Give where all donations will be match-funded to double the amount raised this week.

They hope to tackle the problem of the lake's water quality by raising £80,000 to plant more reed beds, which are a priority habitat in the area.

They have already raised over £30,000 of their 40,000 target with one day to go.

There has been a decline in reed beds in the area and it's estimated that around 90% of reed beds have been lost on Windermere in the past 50 years.

Six hectares of Windermere's reed bed have been restored over the last 10 years, one of the first was at the National Trust's Fell Foot Park.

Fundraising manager at the Lake District Foundation, Steve Tonkin said the reeds "need protecting".

"There's a whole lot of fencing where you have to go into the water to put fencing up to stop the geese; to stop the wildfowl; stop windsurfers; stop paddle boarders; swimmers like myself - there's a lot of money that goes into that protection."

The project is funded by the Love Windermere partnership, which was set up in response to public concern about water quality.

Sarah Swindley from Love Windermere said: "One of the biggest drivers is climate change.

"The lake's warming, it's warmed I think one and a half degrees in the past ten years, which is really significant.

"So when we see more algal blooms on the lake, that's often the case.

"I would like to see that everything going into the lake is as good quality as it can be, but the silt in the bottom of the lake is probably our biggest challenge over time, and it will take generations for things to improve."

Kath Smith from the South Cumbria Rivers Trust said boat action and wave action can disturb the roots of reed beds.

She added: "Tree encroachment has quite an impact as well as wildfowl like geese and ducks nibbling away those roots - particularly the shoots in the spring.

"The extreme weather conditions that we're experiencing also have an impact.

"We see weeks of droughts at times and then we see weeks where the reeds and the water edges are just underwater for too long."

Six hectares of Windermere's reed bed have been restored over the last 10 years, one of the first was at the National Trust's Fell Foot Park.

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