02/09/2026
🛶 Rivers are often in the news for the wrong reasons – with flooding, drought and pollution... However, there is also fantastic work being done across Wales to protect, restore and celebrate our rivers, and to help ensure people can live safely alongside them, and enjoy their benefits.
💧🦅The river Dyfi is at the heart of the Dyfi biosphere, so informs much of the work we do.
There is too much good work being done Wales-wide to fit in to one post – but here are some examples to inspire further action, and perhaps participate in.
💧The poet and geographer Hywel Griffiths is leading the ‘Coleddau’ Literature Wales residency which focuses on the ecological health of the Cleddau: https://www.literaturewales.org/our-projects/llen-mewn-lle-lit-in-place/coleddu/
💧WWF Cymru Wales are running ‘There’s something in the water’ series of ‘urgent yet hopeful’ video stories about rivers across Wales: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh4Vo_sWpoY
💧WWF Cymru are also running the ‘Pembrokeshire Wholescape’ project that responds to how the challenges faced on the land, in the seas, coasts and rivers are all connected, and require working on a ‘larger interconnected scale’ in collaboration with local communities: https://www.wwf.org.uk/what-we-do/projects/pembrokeshire-wholescape?pc=AWS014007&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=6475886760
💧The newly announced Teifi Fyw project will help restore the Afon Teifi and (re)connect communities with nature: https://teifi.one/resources/about-the-teifi/the-teifi-demonstrator-project/teifi-fyw-living-teifi-people-and-nature-together
💧The West Wales Rivers Trust have recently awarded their first businesses with their River Champion business awards, and are calling for other businesses in Llandovery and Llandeilo to get in touch if they would like recognition for the work they do to protect local rivers.
💧The Menai Strait Partnership Forum has just launched the State of the Strait and Mynydd i'r Fenai project. This is ‘an ambitious plan for nature and water quality at scale, creating a new bioregion that unites all the rivers draining into the Menai Strait with the Strait itself’. https://www.menaiforum.org/
💧The Wye and Usk Foundation is doing brilliant work with their Love Your River campaign and wetland creation projects, among others.
💧Closer to home, in the Biosffer Dyfi area, Tir Canol have launched the Llif Report which connects people, nature and action to reduce flood risk in the Leri and Ceulan catchments. They have created a model which brings together local knowledge and scientific evidence, has much to offer other communities across Wales as a blueprint.
💧There are countless other organisations working tirelessly to keep our rivers clean of rubbish, conserve habitats and lobby for greater protections and rights for our rivers.
Is there any other work for rivers you would like to champion?
Cyfoeth Naturiol Cymru / Natural Resources Wales
Llenyddiaeth Cymru / Literature Wales
Canol Cymru
Cymru
