It's all coming together for our amazing Celebration of the Rights of the River Wensum on Saturday the 30th April!
We hope all of you will be able to make it and come have fun day out as well as spreading an important message about looking after our river.
Entry is free and it is a family friendly event, so please do invite everyone you know!
What is this 'River Rights' thing about?
The 'Rights of the River' declaration is purely symbolic, but we believe it is very important that we stand up for our natural environment. We need a clean, healthy river for our drinking water. To enjoy swimming in or paddling on.
To support nature.
The River Wensum in particular is part of a 'green wedge' that joins the heart of the city to the wildlife rich woodland and wetland further out in the valley. So it has great importance as both as a chalk stream supporting rare ecology, but also as a valuable green breathing space for thousands of people.
The idea behind declaring The Wensum as having 'rights' is that it will be protected better. In some places in the world this has actually been enshrined in law. For instance, the Whanganui River in New Zealand, and the Ganges in India have been given
legal status as people. But what is most important is not that a river is a 'person', but that environmental protection law is upheld.
There are environmental laws in place to look after rivers and ecologically important land in the UK, but they are poorly enforced. The statutory bodies that are supposed to enforce these laws are starved of funds to do their job properly and ensure projects that damage rivers are not bulldozed through. The spirit of laws to protect nature is often circumvented by cynical means such
as 'Biodiversity Net Gain' - for instance pretending that a precious unique area of old woodland could be replaced by planting a patch of saplings elsewhere.
The River Wensum, as
globally rare chalk stream, an SAC, and SSSI, has the highest protections available. Which means protecting it from damage should be priority.
A citizens of Norfolk we can't leave taking care of our Wensum River and Valley up to others, its our river. Let's stand up for the Rights of the River Wensum, and celebrate the River as an important part of our lives!
See you on Saturday the 30th!
