A “Restore the River” event hosted by Friends of the River Wye at the Blake Theatre, Monmouth on Friday 23rd February was attended by around 500 people.
After three years of campaigning for the restoration of the River Wye, the landmark event posed the question is “Are we seeing progress?“
The focus of the evening addressed the main pollution issue, which all agree is rural land use. (So the problem of human sewage was not covered at this event).
We have invited speakers from DEFRA and the Welsh Government, and Natural England. The Chair of the Environment Agency, Alan Lovell and Sir David Henshaw, Chairman of Natural Resources Wales, Jamie Audsley, CEO Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, Simon Evans, CEO Wye & Usk Foundation, Nick Measham, CEO Wild Fish Legal are already confirmed.
We have speakers from River Action, Soil Association, Wildlife Trusts and Wild Fish. There are representatives from major chicken and egg companies in the region, including Avara Foods & Red Tractor. We are awaiting confirmation from British Egg Industry Council, Noble Foods, Stonegate, Tesco and the National Farmers Union.
Each speaker made a short presentation showing the action they’ve taken to address river pollution in the Wye catchment and what further action they intend to take over the next three years.
The event was chaired by Nicola Cutcher, a freelance investigative journalist.
Further information from the event is shown below: