In 2016, conservationists put the bends back into a Lake District river straightened 200 years earlier

Centuries after people forced a Cumbrian river into a straight, artificial channel, nature has reclaimed its original course in the Lake District, bringing endangered wild fish back to historic spawning grounds almost immediately. In the summer of 2016, conservationists restored a 1.1-kilometre stretch of Swindale Beck near Haweswater by putting its natural bends back into the river. Diggers created winding curves along the valley floor to replace a straight, raised channel built by farmers about 200 years earlier. Within three months of the work being completed, Atlantic salmon were seen spawning in the newly created gravel beds for the first time in living memory. The £212,500 project was jointly managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and landowner United Utilities, working with the Environment Agency and Natural England. By allowing the river to follow a more natural path, the project aimed to slow fast water, improve drinking water quality, reduce flood risks downstream and restore lost habitats across the catchment.Undoing two centuries of modificationAbout 200 years ago, local farmers changed Swindale Beck to drain the surrounding land and move water ...