On the 23rd September, the Unlocking the Severn project celebrated a major milestone – the first of our fish passes was opened to river fish!

After years of bid development and a period of 16 months since the works commenced alongside Bevere weir, the fish pass, just north of Worcester has now been completed. The construction on this site faced challenges from exceptional rainfall and river levels over the autumn/winter months, including the wettest February on record. With added impact from COVID19 lockdown, the site couldn’t restart work until late spring this year.

However, on the 23rd September specialist divers cut the steel piles at the mouth of the fish pass and a temporary dam was removed, allowing the river water to finally flow through the new structure. Now, for the first time in more than 170 years, river fish have free passage past the weir at Bevere.

Jason Leach, programme director, Canal & River Trust, comments: “This was a great day for our project. The team have persevered through some challenging conditions, and we are very pleased to see the river flowing through our fish pass at Bevere for the benefit of rare and endangered fish.”

At Bevere, the site landscaping will now be finished, with the riverside footpath, now tracking alongside new fish pass, due to be reinstated by the end of October.

What type of fish pass is Bevere?

At Bevere, the fish pass takes the form a 100m bypass channel, through which fish can swim up a gradually sloped rock-ramp channel around the weir.  Blocks cast into the base of the channel act to slow the water and break up the flow. This creates the conditions that fish, including the endangered twaite shad, can comfortably swim through.

Weirs represent a major barrier to natural fish migration journeys within the river. Fish that will benefit include twaite shad as well as salmon, lamprey and eels. In fact, re-establishing healthy populations of native fish has positive impacts for a wide range of wildlife throughout the river ecosystem.

Navigation weirs on the River Severn were installed in the 1840’s to aid the transport of industrial materials and goods between the black country and the docks at Gloucester. However, these weirs had devastating results for river wildlife – particularly twaite shad. This annual river visitor was traditionally known as the ‘May Fish.’ Before weirs blocked their path, every spring hundreds of thousands twaite shad migrated from the sea to reach their spawning grounds far up the River Severn.

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