We chainsawed trees into rivers - the results are in.

Three years ago, we were doing this. Pretty odd behavior, you would think, for people who restore nature. But the resulting wood we dumped into these streams is now starting to make an impact and reshaping this whole riparian ecosystem. And across a wide variety of interventions, this work has allowed these streams to get healthier and healthier. But we should never just take vibes as a sign things have improved. Here at Mossy Earth, we like data. A good set of standardized baselines and comparable post-intervention results will do. And in this case, the scores of the standardized river condition assessment and the macroinvertebrate surveys have been improving really nicely, across a wide variety of metrics. This project is a combination of a bunch of different improvements that have come together to make some really positive outcomes for this stream. In this video today we're going to go through all the things that Bart has been working on and how in our first report it's looking like this river is doing really well. This is Lily, one of our UK-based biologists and she will be showing you around this stream today. But before we get to that, let's recap how this project came about. In 2023 we partnered with the Bristol-Avon Rivers Trust, otherwise known as BART, to restore two key tributaries of the River Chew in the southwest of England, where historical damming, agricultural runoff and livestock trampling have severely degraded the waterway, causing rapid water flow in unnatural straight streams, sediment buildup and habitat loss. So To fix this, we implemented a variety of small interventions, including 9 woody debris structures, track drainages and wetland scrapes in 2024, followed by 20 additional woody structures in 2025. And all of this work, as well as the baselines and the monitoring that are so crucial, came in at a budget of £58,000, which we were able to provide thanks to our Mossy Earth members, who have a monthly subscription with us. So, as you watch this video, please remember we can only do these projects because of the contributions from our Mossy Earth members, and if you'd like to support To support our rewilding work, you can do so at mossy.earth Now all these interventions are a bit confusing, but as we visit each area we have worked on, I think it will become clearer what this is all about. And to properly show you this place, Lily visited with Ellie, one of our heads of rewilding, who wanted to see the progress, and Jacob from BART. Where are we and what's special about this site? Yeah, so we're in one of our sites near the village of Pensford, just south of Bristol. It's called Lord's Wood. It's slowly transitioning from kind of a working timber woodland back into a native broadleaf. So we've been doing some work down here with Mossy Earth on the very lovely stream down in the valley here, doing some in-stream habitat work to try and make this stream and this river it runs into more beneficial and resilient for spawning salmonids and things like that, as well as some natural flood management as well. The first intervention we want to show you tackles a significant problem preventing species like the Atlantic salmon or the brown trout that migrate from the ocean from reproducing in this catchment and that is the availability of clean gravels for salmonids to spawn. A major blocker for this in the Chew is the excessive sedimentation that turns streams this murky brown color, smothering invertebrates and fish habitat in silt and A lot of this has been coming from some of these roads, so we set out to fix that. Behind me here are some of the cross drains that Bart have built. They're on this very steep section of path, because otherwise when it rained heavily the water would just kind of flood down, pick up loads of dirt and debris and sediment, and that would all end up in the rivers. But by building these... Layers of stone across, it kind of siphons off the water and passes it through all the vegetation and the soil and that kind of cleans and filters it so that when it enters the water it's a lot cleaner. There are now seven cross-drain tracks in Lord's Woods that the landowner has agreed to maintain, which should start having a positive impact. And one way to measure this is through red surveys. Reds are gravel nests that species like trout and salmon lay and fertilize their eggs in. So these two reds that Bart found in surveys before and after the tracks were built give a good indication that there is suitable spawning habitat. But to assess the effectiveness of this work we would ideally see more spawning reds here over time. But unfortunately the ideal window for surveying the past two winters had prolonged high flows which made surveying really hard, or actually impossible, so we will have to wait for the results in the coming year. Then our next stop on the tour of river improvements are these wetland scrapes that were designed to create seasonal ephemeral habitats and reconnect the Connect the river to its floodplain. This is one of our newest interventions on site. It's a scrape which is essentially a shallow pond or ditch dug into the ground. You can also see at the back there there's a small channel that allows water to come in when the river which is running behind it is high. This essentially slows down the flow of the river, it allows collection of water outside the river and expands the habitat of wetland plants and invertebrates. If you've got more and more scrapes going all the way down, you start to really build up a cumulatively large amount of water basically. Over time you're going to reduce that flood peak downstream and it's just making all of these catchments more resilient by working in the upper parts of them and yeah taking that water out and storing it in places where it's not a nuisance, which is what we've done here it's been great. As well as giving the stream a chance to breathe out onto the floodplain, the scrapes offer a lifeline in drier times as well. There's a nice mix of kind The key thing is, as these evolve, we'll have a series of lush mini-wetlands that extend the riparian habitat for more biodiversity to enjoy. As I mentioned, to deliver this work, over the past three years we spent £58,449 to cover the building of the track drainage system, the wetland scrapes and the installation of the woody debris structures in the streams. But this budget also paid for extensive monitoring, because it's essential we work with partners like BART, who are committed to rigorously evaluating the health of these ecosystems and the impact of any rewilding project or intervention. So before we look at the third and final intervention with the cut trees and the woody debris, I want to briefly talk about the monitoring. One of the metrics we are using to evaluate the success here is the river condition assessment, which was carried out using the MORPH5 field protocol. That is quite the mouthful. And it would be a bit much to cover it in this video, so the key thing you need to know is that this is a standard method for evaluating rivers and streams in England, while taking into account the river type. And the result comes as a score, which we can track over time. So for our monitoring, we have it split between upstream and downstream for both tributaries, the Candlestick Stream and the Bathford Brook. These were the initial scores before the work started, and then, right after the interventions, the scores went up across all of them, and as time passed, they continued to improve. Qualitatively, the upstream part of the Bathford Brook now tips into the fairly good territory for its river type, and the candlestick stream has improved so that the downstream is no longer in the moderate category, meaning both of these tributaries are now in the fairly good range, which is fairly good. The key thing is that all scores are climbing after the implementation of the project and if you want to look at the methodology and the report from Bart I have linked them both in the description as usual. We've just seen a baby tawny owl on the floor by this big old yew tree and it was so sweet and we were a bit worried about it but after a quick google we found out that it should be pretty safe and these little owlets fledge quite early and they're away from the nest At that still young age, but yeah, very cool to see. And now let's finally focus on the main intervention that led to the majority of the improvements in this course. So the introduction of woody debris can look anything like felling entire trees into the stream like the one behind me, or simply building a little pile of sticks. But for example the one behind me we cut down the big tree in the back and it's already collecting sticks and leaf matter and eventually as the matter builds up, sediment builds up, It becomes an extra part of the riverbank and it expands that marginal habitat that has been lost in so many rivers. The power here isn't having one tree lying in a stream but an accumulation of woody debris throughout the system. But having said that, just one felled tree can have a big impact by itself. It's bedded in nicely to the bank and it's captured just loads of debris from the very heavy winter flows. It's kind of pushed, I don't know if you can see, it's pushed the river instead of going straight through this section. It's now starting to form a bit of a meander so it's going to cut more of a sinuous path. We've got a bit of a pool developing where it's scoured out from there so fish have got a deeper area of water to live if you get kind of summer droughts and you've got woody debris to provide that base level for the insects and a nice blockage for those winter flows to slow the flow so it's kind of a triple pronged attack for a healthier river. This is an example of the large woody debris that Bart introduced in addition to two other structure types which are hinged trees that are partially cut and still connected to the root system so they continue growing underwater and over the surface giving this lovely dense cover that also traps debris that provides the perfect hiding spots for fish. And then we also have brushwood berms, the pile of branches that Lily mentions but it's a little more strategic than You can kind of see... Where the water's come in, interacted with the woods, dropped out all of its fine sediment, and it is getting plugged up with lots of essentially bank material, so over time, I think this is a couple years old, this will just become an extension of the bank and create some nice marginal shelf, but also pinch the river here, and then get these gravels nice and clean so that it's a good spawning habitat. You've got a really nice pool that's naturally there just downstream of it, and then another riffle coming in, so... You're getting this nice sequential habitat all the way down, and then you've got just a bit more of a natural kind of log jam that's built up just behind it. So it's kind of a nice little cascade of pool riffles and slightly narrow channels. And to quantify this impact we conducted macroinvertebrate surveys, because different species have varying tolerances to pollution and specific habitat preferences. So tracking them over time indicates both water quality and habitat diversity. This is pretty neat stuff. And the scores here show improvements year on year, which means that by reducing silt and reshaping stream beds, banks and margins, the project has successfully made this habitat healthier, cleaner and more diverse for a wider variety of invertebrates to enjoy. And you might rightly wonder why we care so much about these little guys. But the thing is, they are the crucial link at the base of the aquatic food chain that break down organic matter and transfer that energy from primary producers like algae further up to higher level predators like amphibians, fish, reptiles and birds. So seeing increases in their diversity means we're supporting all of these species from the foundation up. And this evidence-based approach ensures we spend our rewilding budget efficiently. And as we've built up. Quite a few internal processes to run impactful rewilding projects, we thought we would start sharing some of this stuff with you so you can run your own projects wherever you, our members and viewers, live. Meaning we can spread our impact to many more distant places. It's a huge opportunity. So recently we launched our open rewilding page where we share some of the tools that we have created and adapted for our work, There are three available now as well as how to use them. and we'll keep adding more as we progress and we also added our introductory rewilding course on here which we have now made free and open since we have recouped the cost of producing it and besides that we're also starting to collate here the scientific publications we have contributed to, project reports, evidence reviews and so on so that you can see some of the knowledge that you are contributing to. I think this is a pretty cool new page, and exactly the kind of stuff we should be putting our effort and minds to. And if this is the kind of thinking that you align with, and you would like to support our evidence-based rewilding project, then please consider becoming a member at mossy.earth. Our members fund everything that we do, from the coral projects that are bringing back destroyed reefs, to The ranch we bought in Portugal and are now rewilding, to the forests we're flooding in Slovakia, or the rivers we are restoring in Colorado. The point is, we do all kinds of cool and impactful work, while keeping our growth organic and grounded, with no money spent on ads or sponsorships, no investors, no debt, no strings attached, no AI in our storytelling or filming. Keep things simple. We focus on being meticulous and scientific about our projects, and precise about the sort of impact claims that we make when we do tell the stories of these projects. So if that sounds like something for you, then please consider joining us at mossy.earth. The membership starts at the price of a fancy coffee each month, but together, all of these memberships make our projects happen. Now let's get back to this wonderful stream to look at another benefit of the tree cutting we have done here which is the amount of light that now reaches the waterline. You can see they've opened quite a lot of space in the canopy already but just one tree and it's had quite an outsized impact. This is really great for facilitating growth of aquatic plants which help with the purification and the oxygenation of the water. It's really great to see all these actions coming together and resulting in entire watercourse improvement. The river condition scores have all gone up since the interventions. We have more macroinvertebrate biodiversity, the sedimentation has decreased and the overall habitat complexity has increased. So, so many good things have happened and are all working together for a massive improvement across this stream When reading through these assessments, one word which really stood out to me was richness. I love that this word was used to encapsulate a lot of the project's outcomes, because it's a strong contrast with what we've come to expect about the deteriorating state of our rivers. It's easy to spiral down a rabbit hole of depressing reports on nature, so when we've created something to be optimistic about, we should be really proud. So that's it from this project for the next few while. Thank you so much to Bart who've worked so hard over the last three years and have left this river in a much better condition than they found it. And thank you so much to our Mossy Earth members who have funded this project and if you'd like to become a member then you know what to do. Until next time, cheers!