Somerset river re-routed to original floodplain in bid to combat climate change

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A river in Somerset has been reconnected to its original floodplain as part of a restoration project to help reduce the impact of climate change.

Using tonnes of felled trees, large parts of the River Aller has been locked off to slow the water down to fill the channel. It's hoped doing so will eventually reconnect the river with the floodplain and create wildlife-friendly wetland areas.

Ben Eardley, the project director at the National Trust site, said: "Nature likes a bit of mess, a bit of chaos and dynamism. That's what we have tried to do here - restore a bit of that complexity that we've lost in our river systems."

But stopping a river is no easy task as Ben goes onto explain: "There's been some nervous moments during this restoration but I think that you can see that it is worth it.

"We can have some grazing here and an amazing river system with some wildlife."

There are already signs that wildlife is thriving across the new basin, just weeks after the project was finished.

Jack Siviter, a ranger, said: "It's amazing, in the last six weeks we have gone from a completely dry landscape to now seeing dragonflies mating and laying eggs in the pond. It's green now which is just a spectacular reaction."

While the Environment Agency had never dealt with an application before to fill in a river it now believes it could be vital in slowing down flood waters.

Matthew Pang from the Environment Agency said: "We need different approaches to managing flood risk.

"Judicial approaches of building flood defences and raising embankements more is not sustainable with climate change.

"We need a mixture of jusicial flood schemes which are still very important but also more nature based solutions that we have here."