From tiny trickles to infamous torrents, our region has some wonderful rivers

Not a week goes by without rivers hitting the headlines, and it is right and proper that they’re in the news because, whether we feel it's our fault or not, we're causing terrible damage to these vital ecosystems.

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The Hesp Out West pages are meant to be about fun things to do and we do not focus on activism or politics, but as so much leisure time and enjoyment can be gained from watercourses which flow in their unpolluted natural state, it seems only right to join the fray.

Some of my best ever days out have been enjoyed in, upon and around Westcountry rivers, and I am sure a great many readers might say the same. We really do have some exquisite waterways both in the greater South West region and in the far west peninsula, where I once visited 40 rivers and major streams for a newspaper series. I loved the experience so much I followed it up by writing another series about our major estuaries, which I explored in a historic rowing boat.

So I feel somewhat qualified to claim that I know a bit about rivers, and also to be appalled by the ongoing attack we humans seem to be having upon the health of our watercourses.

For centuries we used them as convenient sewers and rubbish takeaway systems - and going way back our ancestors were able to get away with it because their pooing populations were so small and they didn’t have destructive chemicals and plastics. The Industrial Revolution changed all that and forced the building of municipal sewerage systems. Many of which we're still relying on today, while paying water company bosses vast sums to try and explain why they're not investing in new.

It's all sad - and mad - as a brilliant new book by Robert Macfarlane does its best to portray. Is A River Alive? asks a fundamental question: what if a river were not a resource to be owned, but a legal person with its own rights? The book explores this idea by examining a global legal movement that is attempting to grant “personhood” to natural entities. A direct challenge to the postindustrial Western view which seems to be that nature is an inert property, there to be exploited.