Restoration work has commenced on the Evenlode, Glyme, and Dorn rivers flowing through farmland in the North Cotswolds as part of a pioneering government-led initiative. The project enlists over 50 tenants, farmers, and land managers united in the North East Cotswold Farmer Cluster to address pressing challenges like severe flooding, soil erosion, declining water quality, and loss of biodiversity across more than 3,000 hectares.
Supported by a £100 million public funding package over 20 years, the cluster members will implement a range of restorative actions. These include reconnecting rivers to their natural floodplains and planting trees, pastures, and diverse habitats upstream to regulate water flow and foster wildlife habitats.
Local farmers attest to the urgency, with some fields experiencing floods nine out of the past ten years, including one field that flooded nine times during the winter of 2023-2024 alone. Beyond preserving farmland and restoring natural ecosystems, the project aims to attract innovative private finance, supporting emerging nature markets.
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Tim Coates, a director of the North East Cotswold Farmer Cluster and local farmer near Chipping Norton, highlights the project’s significance: “This is one of the first large-scale landscape recovery projects that has successfully coordinated dozens of land managers to restore the landscape comprehensively. It demonstrates how river restoration can create bigger, better, and more connected habitats.”
Government officials from the Environment Agency, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Natural England visited flood-affected fields during the project’s launch. Alan Lovell, chairman of the Environment Agency, emphasized the collaborative effort: “We strongly support farm clusters nationwide, and the way this project has united various stakeholders is a big positive.”
The Evenlode project is the largest yet to advance in the taxpayer-funded “landscape recovery” programme, part of the post-Brexit environmental land management overhaul replacing EU farming subsidies. The programme focuses on large-scale nature restoration and attracting private investment to meet legally binding wildlife recovery targets.
Similar projects include the Boothby Wildland rewilding initiative in Lincolnshire covering 600 hectares and an upland nature restoration across 2,800 hectares in Upper Duddon, Cumbria.
The Evenlode restoration encompasses diverse habitats—woodlands, limestone grasslands, meadows, and fens—targeting protection for native species such as crayfish, water voles, and fen violets. Community engagement is integral, with footpaths featuring QR codes that link visitors to educational stories, photographs, and insights from the project.
Tim Field, facilitator of the North East Cotswold Farmer Cluster, explains that farmers are intentionally allowing rivers to flood designated floodplains, temporarily converting formerly arable fields to natural wetlands. These wetlands will attract wading birds and other wildlife while acting as natural filters—capturing sediment loaded with pollutants like phosphates and nitrogen, thus improving downstream water quality.
When dry, those same areas will provide grazing for livestock and encourage wildflowers to flourish, supporting insects and pollinators. The wetlands and grasslands also serve as carbon sinks, helping to capture atmospheric carbon.
Upstream efforts focus on tributaries along steep slopes, creating storage zones for stormwater at field edges while planting 250 hectares of trees and 500 hectares of pasture and wood parkland. This strategy enhances the landscape’s resilience by slowing water flow, mitigating floods, and storing water to buffer against drought.
“We aim to keep water in the landscape longer rather than let it rush downstream,” says Mr. Field.
While government funds provide an essential foundation, the initiative plans to draw on private finance sources over time. This includes revenue from biodiversity net gain credits, which require developers to compensate for environmental impacts, and carbon credit sales to organizations seeking to offset emissions through natural sequestration.
The restoration of these rivers represents a holistic and innovative approach to countryside management — marrying agricultural productivity, nature recovery, community involvement, and climate resilience.