“Reconnecting the Wooler Water” is an innovative collaborative project to remove a major barrier to salmon migration on the Wooler Water and restore the river to a more natural state
The Wooler Water and its tributaries, the Harthope Burn and Carey Burns rise from the slopes of the Cheviot Hills, flowing through a varied upland and lowland landscape before joining the River Till below the town of Wooler, and ultimately feeding into the River Tweed (one of the most important freshwater ecosystems in Britain), near Coldstream.
Upstream of Wooler, the Wooler Water has been heavily modified by historic gravel extraction. At its peak, 32,000 m3 of gravel was being extracted annually, 222 times the natural sediment yield of Wooler Water. As a result, the Wooler Water has cut down into its floodplain by approximately 8 m. The Ford and the upstream check weirs were installed to stabilise the channel, and to prevent further deepening or incision of the channel. Channel incision has largely stopped above Haugh Head, but it continued downstream creating a further 3 m of incision, resulting in what we see today. Despite installation of these structures, the river continued to incise downstream of Haugh Head.
The Ford at Haugh Head is now a sheet-piled vertical step of around 3 m which fish cannot easily advance past and is the last remaining large barrier to migratory fish in the Tweed catchment with fish surveys confirming that salmon spawning is largely absent upstream of the Ford despite 12 km of available prime spawning habitat.
Reconnecting the Wooler Water aims to restore the Wooler Water to a fully connected river corridor as part of a nationally and internationally significant restoration programme. By removing the Ford, natural processes like flooding, sediment movement and channel change will improve the Wooler Water’s health and long-term resilience. The dynamic nature of the Wooler Water, the scale of channel incision and the ambition to restore the river’s natural morphological function, has made the removal of the Ford and restoration of the river at Haugh Head a unique and highly complex challenge for the project team. The project design responds to this complexity by working with, rather than against, the river’s natural processes, and understanding the geomorphology of this complex site has been crucial in refining the final restoration programme.
Please view our short video below for a great introduction to Reconnecting the Wooler Water and explore our pages for more details of what this ambitious restoration programme will be delivering in the Till-Tweed catchment.
Removal of the Ford at Haugh Head is also highlighted as a key outcome within the River Till Restoration Strategy, which has been guiding restoration works across the Till catchment since 2013. Tweed Forum, the Environment Agency and Natural England have been overseeing delivery of recommended measures within the Strategy, working in partnership with many other organisations and landowners/managers. You can find out more about other restoration projects in key river reaches over on our River Till Restoration Strategy page).