Trust raises cash to care for chalk rivers

HERTS and Middlesex Wildlife Trust has been taking part in the Big Give Green Match Fund to raise cash for the conservation and restoration of the area's globally rare chalk rivers to improve their health, increase flood resistance and support local wildlife.

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The Big Give’s Green Match Fund campaign has given the wildlife charity an opportunity to boost its work in restoring the natural health of the area's globally rare chalk rivers.

The fundraising effort will help to put the ‘wiggle’ back in to our chalk rivers, significantly helping with climate adaptation and protect the wildlife populations that these ‘rare as rainforest’ habitats support.

With every pound donated, the Green Match Fund will double it, providing twice the impact of vital funds raised by donations over a week-long period, up to a total of £20,000.

There are only 260 chalk streams in the world, and Hertfordshire and Middlesex is home to 10 per cent of this global resource.

These unique river systems are so rare, and support some of our most vulnerable species, including the critically endangered water vole, wild brown trout, European eel and kingfisher.

Fundraising to protect these unique habitats, which are our equivalent to tropical rainforests, and the species that depend on them is more vital than ever with one in six species at risk of extinction in Great Britain.

Chalk rivers face a host of challenges posed by pollution, abstraction and modification impacting the flow, quality and physical habitat - the trinity of ecological health for a pristine chalk river.