Adopting The River Thames

This week sees the start of next year’s Oxford-Cambridge Boat race with the trial races being rowed on the Thames - a cleaner river than it has been for some time, thanks to the work of Thames21.

Their Chief Executive for the past three years has been Deborah Leach, who has helped guide the organization into looking after London’s canals as well as tributaries and other rivers, but the Thames is her pride and joy.  

“We started out as a research project for the Keep Britain Tidy organization when they wanted to venture out into waterways," Debroah explains.  "And what they found is that local people were concerned.  They like tidying up the river banks at low tide and getting their wellies muddy, and seeing the improvement they can make."

They have now organized a regular army of River Keeper volunteers, who wear the Thames21 uniform for recognition and present a friendly face to the public answering their many queries. These can range from where is the best place to fish, to reporting graffiti so it can be removed, and telling them if wildlife is in difficulty.

The latest success of the River Keeper volunteers is the River Cray in Bexley, Kent.

“We have a full time river co-ordinator there," Deborah tells me.  "It’s a lovely river, flowing right through some heavily built up areas, but until two years ago it was seen as a drain and a dust bin for the area. Everything ended up dumped in the river, and as a result it looked awful. Now it is completely transformed. It is now looked upon as a community asset, fishing has increased in the area. People know the River Cray is there now. It has become a green artery running through the estates.”

Back on the River Thames the organization has started a series of Adopt a River scheme. This is not, as it might sound, adopt the whole River Thames, but just the area near to where you live so that groups from the community, who seldom meet, can come together and look after their part of the river bank, getting rid of the rubbish on the foreshore at low tide, and noting the wildlife using their area.

Church groups have come forward, but more excitingly for Thames21 is the take up by corporate groups.

"We get a lot more corporate groups cleaning up the Thames now," Deborah says.  "They see it as a team building activity outdoors. We’ve even had hundreds of people working on the foreshore to move heavy things like fridges and even cars. They find that it is quite good fun, they get plenty of fresh air and they come off the foreshore knowing that they have all done something useful.”

I have coxed racing eights on the Thames for many years, I run down the tow paths regularly and just love this part of the countryside in the middle of London. You see herons waiting like cats, which proves that there are fish in the water these days whien there were not in the past - and every now and again a seal appears. But there is the other side to it all, -the rubbish, either fly tipped by horrible builders upstream, rubbish obviously chucked overboard from all the gin palaces, as we rowers call them, which fortunately vanish in the winter when the weather sorts out the real river lovers from the rest of humanity. Only rowers and wildlife remain. I will not try to explain which are which. Of course there is also Thames Water who every now and again poison the Thames with sewage, but the courts are going to look after that.

But for Thames21 more exciting things are happening, especially their work to bring youth anglers out of the estates into the open air. Already there is an amazing scheme going on in Ladbroke Grove, the epi-centre of the Notting Hill carnival  The National Youth Volunteering project has just given Thames21 £250,000 to engage young people with their waterway areas. Ladbroke Grove is next door to a canal. I always remember The Who’s Roger Daltrey telling me that when he lived in Shepherd’s Bush, where the group started, he used to go fishing on that same canal when it reached Willesden. Now he owns his own trout farm in leafy Sussex! 

For further information or to get involved yourself, contact Thames21 at www.thames21.org.uk

Michael Wale broadcasts on LBC Radio. 

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