Month: June 2023

Meet Lindsey Cole: a cold water swimmer, adventurer, environmentalist, writer and speaker.  Following her progress with her new children’s book, The Mermaid, the Otter and the Big Poo, we recently caught up with Lindsey to find out more about her life, work, and what drives her to rescue Britain’s rivers. 

Tell us about yourself

I’m Lindsey, an endurance environmental mermaid, children’s author and writer.  I have a big love for swimming in rivers, seas and lakes. 

What first sparked your interest in river protection?

I was learning to free-dive in Indonesia and thought I’d stung my hand on a jellyfish which was blobbin away, but it was actually a small bit of plastic. At a similar time, a giant sperm whale washed up dead down the shore. His belly was stuffed with all sorts of plastic. Having had a career as an adventure for over a decade, exploring some of the most spectacular parts of the world, I wanted to do something about it.

I returned home, to swim the length of the Thames as a mermaid, with a large mermaid sculpture made from recycled plastic bottles, to highlight the issue. Along the way, I rescued a drowning cow and ended up on page 3 of a national tabloid. A school asked my permission to turn my story into their school play and invited me along. It was adorable, so I turned it into a children’s book. Whilst touring the country with The Mermaid and the Cow, I discovered just how much kids love mermaids and how being one is a great tool to discuss serious issues with them in a fun and engaging way. I’ve now come up with a series, which I’m mega chuffed about because it marries my love of adventure, storytelling and the environment.  

You have a background in journalism and documentary-making.  What are some of the stand-out adventures that you have had with these roles?

I’ve always been curious and interested and a bit of a daydreamer. After I left uni, I had no idea what I wanted to do so gave myself 5 years to work it out whilst travelling and working abroad. After breaking my leg in Australia, whilst living in a van, a kind group of aussies took me in. All i could do was watch films and read books and it gave me time to reflect. I realised I loved learning, exploring and meeting interesting people so embarked on a career in journalism. 

My favourite role was being a producer/director for a BT Sport documentary series on the charities that they funded. This took me all over the world to the Indian jungle, South African Cape Flats and Brazilian favellas, where sport is used to help disadvantaged people better their lives. It was truly inspiring. 

You are now working on a series of environmental mermaid adventure swims, children’s books and films. The Mermaid, the Otter and the Big Poo is the second in the series.  Tell us more about the story and what inspired you to create it.

Nine months after The Mermaid and the Cow, river pollution was making a lot of noise in the news. I had depression at the time and wasn’t in a great living situation and needed an adventure to help motivate me- adventure is very much my medicine. I mermaided the length of my local river- Bristol Avon, towing a giant poo sculpture, investigating how river pollution affects wildlife like otters. I threw the project out into the ether for help to make my poo sculpture, canoe support and anyone interested to talk about river pollution and was flooded with interest and support. It was beautiful. 

And finally, in your opinion, what needs to change in order to rescue Britain’s rivers?

There’s so much that needs to change. The big one starts with the government and their relationship with polluters. It’s astonishing that in 2023 polluters are getting away with their crimes. But, it is such a big and complex problem. Our sewage system cannot cope with the increase in population, new houses, paved driveways etc. I don’t understand how shareholders are able to make such significant profits if the service that we’re paying for isn’t working. I wish that our British water could be owned by us, the British public. 

It may be a complex task to fix, but it is possible to fix. Famed for its swimming culture, Copenhagen harbour hasn’t always been welcoming. Wastewater was piped were people now swim and industrial waste, oil spills and Dead fish were a common sight. In the late 90s, the city spent about $440 million to reroute the Copenhagen’s wastewater, built overflow barriers and create underground water storage vessels, making it not just safe for swimmers, but wildlife, tourism and the economy. They also have a sophisticated alarm system that predicts when and where an overflow will happen. So it is possible. We just need people at the top to care. We’ve seen in the last few years that enough public care. 

Wouldn’t that be wonderful. To have a culture of swimming in city centres through the UK all year round and for people to delight in that thought rather than feel nauseous thinking about it. 

Lindsey Cole, June 2023

We are absolutely delighted to welcome Prof Alastair Driver, the Director of Rewilding Britain, to River Action’s Advisory Board! In our latest blog, we find out more about Alastair’s life and professional experience as one of the most experienced river and wetland conservationists in the UK.

I’ve been immersed in rivers and streams since I was knee-high to a heron. As a young boy with a charismatic naturalist father and a playground in the middle of nowhere on the Cotswold scarp between Gloucester and Stroud, it was inevitable that if I wasn’t chasing butterflies with a net twice my size, or clambering up the majestic local Elm trees, then I could be found – admittedly largely unsuccessfully – trying to catch an elusive eel, or being a highly inefficient beaver, trying to dam the local stream.

By a huge stroke of luck, my degree in Ecology at Lancaster University led immediately into a Manpower Services Commission contract carrying out wildlife surveys of the rivers and streams of Gloucestershire throughout the blissful summer of 1978. One thing led to another and I found myself in the role of Fish Rearing Officer for the Thames Water Authority in 1983 responsible for, amongst other things, rearing Atlantic Salmon in an attempt to re-establish a self-sustaining population in the Thames catchment. Then I got my lucky break. Within 18 months of joining TWA, I landed their first-ever Conservation Officer job. There were no rules, no budget, nothing. Just me and my dog Tigger. I freely admit I made it up as I went along – certainly to start with! But 20 years later when I moved on to become Head of Conservation for the Environment Agency, I was able to leave behind the legacy of a department of 30 superbly expert conservation staff, a multi-million £ budget, 20 years of improved local policies and practices and a portfolio of hundreds of river and wetland creation and restoration projects, of which of course I am hugely proud.

My 14 years as National Head of Conservation for the EA followed a similar pattern but was of course focused on national policy and strategy. Initially there was a dearth of conservation policy and guidance, I only had 4 staff (the EA total was app 10,000) and the funding for EA conservation was frankly pathetic. But again assisted by a brilliant team, we built a department of over 20 staff with a direct influence on > £100m of expenditure and nature conservation scrutiny of everything the EA did. During that time I also persuaded the organisation to allow me to lead a bid to win the International Riverprize for the Thames based on the whole catchment approach to river management. This focussed on 5 strands – working with farmers to address agricultural diffuse pollution, major biodiversity enhancement through sustainable capital flood defence schemes, creating a strategic river restoration strategy for London, reducing storm sewer overflow impacts in the Thames Tideway via the “super-sewer” and mitigating the impacts of climate change on coastal habitats via managed realignment. This showcased many decades of work by many thousands of people from many dozens of organisations and it was the undoubted highlight of my career to receive that award on their behalf in Perth, Australia in 2010 in front of 700 of
the world’s leading river management experts. Less enjoyable was lugging the huge, weighty trophy around Australia on holiday afterwards! I’m delighted to say that the bid team quickly agreed to hand over the $350,000 prize money to a project aimed at reducing human impact on the Yamuna River in India.

In 2016 after 34 years in public service I felt it was time to move on and take up a new challenge, so I dived into the unknown and within 3 months I’d certainly found that challenge, because I had become the Director of Rewilding Britain. My role then, as it is now, was twofold – firstly I travel the country advising large landowners and landowning organisation on rewilding at scale, and secondly I advise politicians and policy-makers on policy and funding to help mainstream rewilding as one of the many tools in the toolbox of nature recovery and climate change mitigation. I haven’t got time here to go into much detail, but in summary rewilding is the large scale restoration of ecosystems to the point where nature is allowed to take care of itself. It involves a spectrum of activity, but one of the really important principles is that it seeks to restore natural processes at scale. And this is where my day-job links perfectly with the aims of River Action UK. We need to be restoring natural river processes at scale to achieve not only a healthy environment but a healthy economy and we cannot possibly do that if we are discharging raw sewage into our rivers, abstracting water well beyond sustainable levels and allowing run-off from huge tracts of farmland to pollute our rivers even further. Rivers are both the arteries of the landscape and its beating heart and quite frankly treating them like sh*t is only going to end one way for us.

In all my years raising money for and overseeing physical river restoration projects, I and my colleagues were driven on by the knowledge – or so we thought – that water quality was improving all the time because sewage works technology and farming rules for water etc were all heading in the right direction, so our efforts would soon be rewarded with swimmable, fishable, drinkable rivers everywhere. How wrong we were. How naïve we were. What has happened to our rivers and coastal waters in the last 30 years or so is a national disgrace. The water companies, the regulatory bodies and successive governments have all let us and themselves down really badly. Now we need to make sure they put that right – and fast – because as every year passes, the challenge and cost of sustained recovery increases dramatically.

It therefore goes without saying that it is a privilege for me to join the Advisory Board of River Action UK. Now I’ve got a chance to help make it right before it’s too late.

Prof Alastair Driver
June 2023