On 21st October, AMBER participated in this year’s edition of Europe’s biggest annual environmental event, EU Green Week. The event engaged thousands of individuals from all over Europe in both real-life and virtual events, and on social media. If you missed it, the recordings can be found here.

The virtual sessions and events focussed on the need to reverse nature and biodiversity decline in Europe. These declines are happening in all ecosystems including freshwater ones. Professor Carlos Garcia de Leaniz presented AMBER in session 2.2 “Restoring River Continuity in Europe Together” and described how the work of the project can help in achieving more effective stream connectivity and how this can benefit the new EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030’s aim to open up 25,000km of free-flowing rivers in Europe.

Through our work, we have found Europe’s rivers are some of the most fragmented in the world and we have developed several tools and resources to help restore Europe’s rivers to a good ecological state. One crucial way to restore these freshwater ecosystems is to remove or adjust barriers that prevent the passage of migrating fish to restore ecological continuity and improve the flow of water and sediments. This is possible through collaborations among stakeholders throughout the river restoration process.