Guardian: ‘The beauty of the River Wye has been acclaimed for centuries. “If you have never navigated the Wye, you have seen nothing,” wrote the travel writer William Gilpin 250 years ago. And its reputation still makes it a magnet for visitors who regularly vote it one of the country’s most beautiful rivers.
But conservationists have warned that the Wye, which meanders south from the craggy peaks of mid-Wales to the lush pastures of the Severn estuary, is today under serious threat – and from an unusual source. They say the pollution from increasing numbers of free-range poultry farms near its banks is now seriously damaging the river.
Chicken excrement rich in phosphates and other chemicals gets spread on the ground around sheds and is being flushed into the river, causing deadly algal blooms to spread. And the problem is becoming increasingly severe as more and more free-range poultry farms are built near the 134-mile-long river. River plants such as ranunculus are being suffocated, oxygen is taken from the water, and the river’s brown trout, chubb and barbel are dying off, removing food for birds such as the kingfisher.
“The Wye looks like French onion or pea soup at times,” said Simon Evans of the Wye and Usk Foundation, an environmental charity which has just completed a major study of the health of the Wye. “We have always had algal blooms on the river but these have been mild. However, over the past few years, they have been getting worse and are appearing earlier in the year – and lasting longer.”
The blooms – which are fuelled by phosphates and triggered by sunshine – are also occurring further and further upstream, Evans added. “They used to appear in mid-river areas around Hereford, for example, but now they are appearing far upstream in water that used to be clear and clean all the time.”
No Comment