About Us
The River Wye has now reached a state of emergency. It is being killed by pollution, a chemical cocktail of excessive agricultural nutrients (over 70%*), sewage (22-24%*), microplastics and superbugs.
(*EA modelling 2023)
About Us
All rivers are important, all life depends on them. Our connection to the river Wye is strong. We live, work, play and are inspired by it. We write songs, poems and create art about it. We are passionate about defending it and all life that depends on it – for ourselves and for the future. If the river dies, we die.
River Action’s appeal against the Environment Agency (High Court Cardiff, Feb 2024)
2024 I am river, hear my voice…
This was the year the River Wye started to appear herself in councils, courts, conferences and commissions. The sacredness of the River, her sovereignty and how she could be protected-in-law, entered our conversation. The Universal Rights of Rivers started to be an aspiration. Carried in a specially created glass vessel, the waters of the Wye were welcomed into the headquarters of Herefordshire Council in a ground breaking ceremony where commitments were made to put the river at the centre of decisions that effect her, and Paul Powlesland (Lawyers for Nature) was commissioned by the Council to advise on finding a ‘voice for the river’.
We helped the River Action lawyers take the River herself – their client – into the Judicial Review against the Environment Agency in Cardiff. And she presided over the Restoring our River event in Monmouth, on the stage with the Chair of the Environment Agency and other speakers, with her own microphone. She was asked to head up the national March for Clean Waters in London with her own sacred carriage and ceremonial team, and she gathered over 100 other waters to join her in a United Waters of Great Britain ceremony. These waters were then dispersed as ambassadors to the Bishop of Wales Welsh River Summit and the inaugural meeting of the Water Commission in Whitehall.
Feargal Sharkey with the Universal Declaration of River Rights (High Court Cardiff, Feb 2024) – ©AdamFinch, RiverActionUK)
Ceremony at Bath Abbey, with water from the Wye (Feb 2024)
The Wye water ceremoniously brought to Herefordshire County Council’s HQ by the Goddess and Lady Wye (Feb 2024) – ©Rick Goldsmith
‘Wild Service’ Ceremony with authors Jon Moses, Nadia Shaikh and Amy-Jane Beer (Hay on Wye Festival, June 2024) – ©JonSimpson
The Wye is joined with waters brought from around the UK and features centre stage at the March for Clean Water (London, Nov 2024)
2023 A breakthrough in corporate action…
In 2023 we helped shift Tesco and their chicken supplier Avara into action!
We worked alongside Marches Climate Action, Herefordshire Wildlife Trust and River Action UK, to name and shame Tesco for their culpability in the death of the Wye.
After a spring of awareness raising and petitioning Tesco customers across the catchment, about the hypocrisy of Tesco’s environmental policies, the campaign led with ‘Lady Wye’ and her chickeny entourage, went to Tesco AGM to ask pointed questions and protest loudly outside. During late summer the partnership continued to pester them with a creative digital campaign, street art and fly posting . We even had ‘watchers’ standing vigil outside the Roundtable meeting in Hay where Tesco had capitulated to meet the Wildlife Trust and other local stakeholders.
Apparently the pressure applied to Tesco, was passed on in spades to Avara, with positive outcomes. They accelerated their plans to prevent their suppliers phosphate pollution from entering the Wye. They banned the sale of their farms’ chicken manure for spreading in the Wye catchment from January 2024.
Lady Wye leads the protest at the Chepstow Store (March, 2023)
Tesco’s annual AGM (June, 2023)
The Mantle of Responsibility representing hundreds of customer signatures collected at Tesco’s stores in the Wye Valley
Chicken shed (IPU) post box used to collect signatures
Tesco refuses to accept the Mantle of Responsibility and Lady Wye ‘led’ away by Tesco security
©AdamHughes Photography
The Goddess of the Wye arises…
The plight of the Wye got an injection of press and media attention this year thanks to the visually stunning, majestic Goddess puppet created by Kim Kaos, arts activist. Her 12 foot high body was crafted in willow, her head papered in recycled eco-activist pamphlets and her fingers made from end-of-life swimming noodles. She was a sensation at events up and down the river, invited to support rivers further afield and got numerous spots in the local press, and on the BBC.
“I am the Wye and speak for all life that depends on a clean river – the salmon, the kingfisher, the crayfish, the water-crowfoot and indeed you mere humans too. I am dying. Never in the thousands of years of my life has my water been so polluted, poisoned by sewage and the chemicals you pour into the soil along my banks. Shame! Shame on you stewards of the land who have lain me on my death bed.”
The Goddess of the Wye comes ashore, Ross on Wye (June, 2023) – ©BBC H&W
The Goddess of the Wye (Ross on Wye, June, 2023) – ©Rick Goldsmith
Dramatic scene and great photo op with Angela Jones (Monmouth, 2023)
Goddess of the Wye at Riversong Festival (Redbrook, June 2023)
Leading the procession (WyeJuly Monmouth, 2023) – ©Drabble&Co
Photo Credit: Eamon Bourke
2022 Spreading the message…
Launching Wye July…
A year on from the Walking with the Wye pilgrimage and with the river continuing to decline, we created ‘WyeJuly’, a month of events held along the river in Hay, Hereford, Leominster and Monmouth attended by over 2500 people.
Our events celebrated the river through poetry, music and song. We brought communities together to discuss what they could do, to focus awareness on the continuing decline in water quality, and to demonstrate how much we care for our rivers.
Ben Taylor Davies (Regenben) speaking at Lift the River, Hay Castle, 2022
Nick Day, Co Founder of Friends of the Lower Wye, demonstrating water quality testing, Monmouth WyeJuly 2022
River sampling activities at the Family Fun Day by Victoria Bridge in Hereford WyeJuly 2022
Sharing the interests and concerns of citizens about the River Lugg, tributary of the Wye, at Leominster WyeJuly 2022 with CPRE Herefordshire
Angela Jones, Wild Woman of the Wye, passionate river campaigner and Founder of Save the River Usk, sharing her intimate knowledge of our dying river at WyeJuly Monmouth 2022
2021 How it all began…
In July 2021 we undertook a month-long pilgrimage along the River Wye from its source to where it flows into the Severn estuary. A celebration of this magnifcent river to raise awareness of the environmental destruction it is facing. Pure water was collected from the source at Pumlumon (Plynlimon), in Wales, and carried by a succession of walkers alongside the Wye, accompanied by swimmers, canoeists and paddleboarders, through areas of great pollution.
Walking with the Wye 2021 ©EamonBourke
Walking with the Wye 2021 ©SallySimons
Mollie Meager delivering the pure source water with the SARA (Seven Area Rescue Assoc) team at Beachley Point where the Wye meets the Severn
The water was distributed along the way to bring attention to the deteriorating state of the rivers and the life that depends on them. Special ‘handover events’ engaged local people at key places en route including Hay, Hereford, Ross, Lydbrook, Redbrook and Chepstow.
Walking With The Wye was a breakthrough event for our campaign, bringing Save The Wye local, regional and national media attention. From then on both the media and the local public have shown sustained interest in the state of the Wye.
We demand the restoration of the river to its former health, beauty and biodiversity and for its water to be safe enough to swim and play in once again.
About the river Wye
The iconic river Wye, said to be the birth place of tourism, stretches for 155 miles and is deemed one of the most important rivers in Europe for nature conservation. It has two designated Sites of Special Scientifc Interest (SSSI, Upper and Lower Wye), is also a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and passes through the Wye Valley, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).
- Voted the nation’s favourite river (Our Rivers campaign 2010)
- It forms part of the border between England and Wales
- It flows through four Counties – Powys, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire
- The watercourse is home to an abundance of wildlife including swans, herons, cormorants, otters, Atlantic salmon, freshwater pearl mussel, white clawed crayfish, sea and river lamprey, mayflies and dragonflies
- There are extensive beds of water crowfoot (Ranunculus) which are of international importance