Barrier Removal in Britain: The Long Road to Longitudinal Connectivity

Restoring longitudinal connectivity of British river ecosystems is uniquely challenging for a variety of historical, economic, sociopolitical and ecological reasons. There is, however, a slowly growing appetite to confront these challenges and remove in-channel barriers as part of wider river restoration efforts. Still, without dramatic changes in government ecological and economic policy, it appears unlikely that longitudinal connectivity of British rivers will be meaningfully restored in the foreseeable future. I discuss impediments to barrier removal in Britain, and describe a number of examples of where these impediments have been overcome.