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One of the lesser-known statutes of the French Revolution was the formal
abolition of all marshes. These unhealthy tracts of wetland, along with
the ruling classes, were considered hostile to the wellbeing of the people
of France. Two years ago, while most of the country commemorated the dramatic
events of 1789, the rivers and wetlands of France found new champions keen
to remind people that these habitats were still being polluted and destroyed.

With a sharp eye for publicity, they filled a bottle with river water
at the source of the Loire, transported it to the estuary and poured it
ceremoniously into the Atlantic Ocean. It was the first time in living memory,
they explained to the attendant media, that unpolluted water from France’s
most famous river had reached the sea. This piece of theatre is typical
of Loire Vivante, an organisation created to oppose the increasing pressures
being put upon the Loire and its tributaries. Nature conservation as a real
issue in France was being born.

It is true that in France, where the population density is around a
third of Britain’s, pressure on the landscape and habitats in some areas
remains relatively light. Even in the Loire catchment, there are regions
that seem to be from another age: the Brenne, where you can still find farmers
hand-scything meadows of waxy crimson orchis; the village of Villaines-les-Rochers
in the Indre valley, where the whole community survives by growing osiers
and making bread baskets; and the fields beside the Loire where subsidies
from the European Commission support the cultivation of that most ancient
of wetland crops, Cannabis sativa, officially grown to supply bait for pike
and the papers for Gauloise cigarettes.

But elsewhere, in the past 20 years, the destroyers of French landscapes
have been doing their best to catch up with the rest of us. In 1980, French
wetlands designated as being of international importance for wildfowl exceeded
1.2 million hectares, an area only slightly smaller than all the agricultural
land of Belgium. By 1990 more than half these wetlands had been drained
or were at some risk.

The Camargue on the Mediterranean coast, approximately half of which
has disappeared or been damaged since 1945, is now suffering from a combined
onslaught of rice growing and tourism. While flamingos will paddle happily
in the rice paddies, farmers regard them as glorified pink crows that trample
the crops. Levelling of the terrain and increased use of insecticides are
driving away flamingos, pratincoles and many other birds. Meanwhile, the
provision of drinking water to increasingly remote areas of the Camargue
is opening the way for an acceleration of tourism, further encouraged by
the proximity of the Mediterranean resorts.

Less well known, but even more disastrously abused, is the Marais Poitevin,
an area north of La Rochelle that floods in winter and provides grazing
land in the summer. By 1988, a group of conservationists had lost their
court case to prevent massive drainage work from being carried out in the
guise of maintenance. One of the finest washlands for winter wildfowl on
the western Atlantic coast, the area is now being systematically destroyed
to make way for wheat and sunflowers.

The rivers of France have fared little better than the wetlands. The
Rhone is now a succession of impounded lakes contained by sterile, raised
flood banks, with more than 20 hydroelectric dams and other barriers between
Geneva and Arles. It was the spectacle of the concrete-lined Rhone that
provoked Loire Vivante to oppose the ambitious programme of dams for the
Loire. Construction of the most notorious of these, at Serre-de-la-Fare,
was due to begin in March 1989. This project, along with another projected
dam at Chambonchard high up on the Cher tributary, has now been abandoned
following pressure from conservationists (This Week, 10 August). These dams
were promoted by EPALA, a powerful syndicate set up in 1983 under the leadership
of Jean Royer, the mayor of Tours, to manage the Loire and its tributaries.

Levelling out the Loire

The problem that EPALA was principally attempting to address was the
erratic flows of the Loire and its tributaries. In winter, flooding is a
real hazard. The swollen waters of the Loire devastated the village of Brives-Charensac
outside Le Puy in 1980 and led to the proposal for the Serre-de-la-Fare
scheme immediately upstream. In summer there is the opposite problem: lack
of water. This is nothing new. Boat travellers on the Loire were always
running aground on sandbanks. Madame de Sevigne, chronicler of the reign
of Louis XIV, was stranded high and dry in 1675, and the novelist Stendhal
had a similar experience well over a century later. Today, it is the electricity
suppliers that have a problem with low flows: the nuclear power stations
that provide a 20th-century backdrop to the familiar chateaux have to be
closed down from time to time for lack of cooling water.

The Loire dams – notably Villerest, completed in 1985, and Le Veurdre,
which is scheduled to be built on the Allier just above its confluence with
the Loire – are designed to hold back unwanted flood water in winter and
release it in summer. The problem, from the conservation point of view,
is what this regulation of flow will do to the wildlife habitats of the
river.

EPALA is at pains to dispel the popular myth that the Loire is Europe’s
last wild river. The raised flood banks alongside the middle Loire were
largely completed by the 12th century. Weirs built to impound the river
for water mills and navigation abound, together with more recent engineering
in connection with the power stations. Downstream from Nantes, the Loire
is an industrialised disaster and even as high up as Le Puy there are sources
of serious pollution. However, within these constraints the Loire still
does run free. The wide river corridor is a maze of split channels, cut-off
meanders, islands, gravel spits, sandy beaches, cliffs and dense alluvial
woodland in various stages of regeneration. With every major flood this
kaleidoscope of habitats is given another shake, so that every stage between
freshly deposited gravel and mature woodland is always represented.

For the ecologist, the Loire is an ever-changing model for the different
stages of biological succession. The river margins, which are first colonised
by sedges and rushes, swarm with dragonflies – among them the magnificent
club-tailed dragonfly. The vast expanses of gravel, which can heat up to
50 °C in the summer, are especially important for their breeding colonies
of tern and ringed plover. These areas are gradually colonised by succulent-leaved
stonecrops and Portulaca oleracea. Elsewhere on the Loire, lawns of moss
and lichen give way to extraordinary natural meadows flourishing in the
damp acid gravels: devil’s bit scabious, pinks, storksbill and rockrose.
The richer silts support no less colourful assemblages of viper’s bugloss,
evening primrose, mulleins, soapwort and sweet rocket. In time, these meadows
are succeeded by thickets of broom and, finally, the lush alluvial woodlands
where elm, ash, poplar and willow grow up through a tangle of hop and traveller’s
joy. These woods are habitats for huge numbers of grey herons, night herons,
black storks and nightingales, as well as otters and beavers. This magnificent
ecosystem is seen at its best at the confluence of the Loire and the Allier.
Known as the Bec d’Allier, the area is imperilled by dams – particularly
Le Veurdre, just upstream.

As the high and low flows are evened out by new dams, the natural habitats
of the Loire are bound to change. Even without human interference, a gravel
island set aside for breeding birds near Orleans has turned into woodland,
possibly as a consequence of reduced flooding in recent winters. This tendency
for trees to replace silts and gravel may come to dominate the riverine
habitats if winter flooding is reduced by damming the river. In such circumstances,
engineers may also feel obliged to step up regular maintenance to control
the accelerated siltation and regeneration that threaten to block the channel.
This could create a dangerous cycle in which the river reacts against the
constraints put upon it, prompting ever more tree felling, dredging and
cementing.

Another issue is how the river flow should be regulated once the dams
are built. Will Le Veurdre be closed only occasionally in order to reduce
the severest, once-in-a-lifetime floods, or will it come to be seen as a
convenient way of preventing minor flooding? The latter policy would encourage
farmers to convert the riverside meadows, which in some areas support both
corncrakes and fritillaries, into arable land.

The Villerest reservoir already built on the upper Loire dispels the
notion, widely held in France, that water-based recreation is a bonus arising
out of such schemes. Since the holiday season coincides with the period
when water is being released from the reservoir, visitors to Villerest have
been confronted with increasingly algae-ridden water and expanses of stinking
mud. The sheer ugliness of the engineering also does nothing to enhance
the place as a beauty spot. Despite facilities for 400 coaches and a funicular
railway, tourists tend to take one look and leave. Meanwhile, inundation
of the reservoir has stripped all vegetation from the valley sides below
the winter water level. But even these slopes are an improvement on some
cliffs that have been sprayed from top to bottom with concrete to prevent
rockfalls.

The contrast between the Villerest reservoir and the pristine glory
of the gorge at Serre-de-la-Fare, now saved from exploitation, is telling.
The Loire here swirls through a landscape that combines basalt cliffs like
giant torrents of frozen lava and forests of oak and pine (the haunt of
wild boar and eagle owl) with stone-walled flowery meadows, which tumble
down gentle slopes to the water. All this is unified by the great S-shaped
loops of the glittering river to create a landscape of exceptional grandeur
and beauty.

Serre-de-la-Fare has made the headlines in the dispute over the future
of the Loire, but in many ways it was unusual. It is high upstream in the
mountains, with Villerest lying between it and the middle Loire, so it could
do nothing to improve low flows for the power stations. For the same reason,
a dam at Serre-de-la-Fare would have no influence on the complex habitats
of alluvial woodland and regenerating gravels of the middle Loire. The core
of opposition to its construction originated not so much with the professional
conservationists as with the citizens of nearby Le Puy. The 1979 Chapon
report, which raised the whole issue of a management strategy for the Loire
and paved the way for the formation of EPALA, scarcely mentions Serre-de-la-Fare.
This dam gained prominence only after a freak flood in 1980.

Options for flood protection that are cheaper than damming the whole
gorge are now being looked at, and may also apply at Chambonchard. They
include flood-proofing of buildings, removal of the most flood-prone properties,
a comprehensive flood insurance policy and an improved warning system. In
the great flood of September 1980, the warning system was singularly ineffective
and the disaster was exacerbated by the 18th-century bridge in Brives-Charensac.
Its arches were blocked by debris and acted as a dam in the area where the
flood could do most damage.

Downstream from Serre-de-la-Fare, however, the conservationists’ case
against all regulation of the river’s flow is less easy to argue. Careful
hydrological modelling and a strict code to avoid over-regulation of flows
might just preserve most of the changing riverine habitats. The impact of
the Le Veurdre scheme on the landscape would be quite different from that
at Serre-de-la-Fare. A low earth embankment would be built across the wide
valley, and the lake behind it would destroy only an area of very ordinary
hedged fields while providing opportunities for wetland creation.

The flood risk in the middle Loire is serious, even though the last
major flood was in 1866. But urban areas, such as Charite-sur-Loire and
Orleans are vulnerable. Recently, building has begun to expand into areas
deliberately designed to receive flooding. With people at risk, Loire Vivante
needs to have an exceptionally strong case for ecological conservation to
support its opposition to dam construction on the middle Loire.

The significance of the victory at Le Puy extends far beyond the gorges
of the upper Loire. It may be the signal for an enlightened policy of river
management throughout France, pioneered at the moment only by the river
authority responsible for the lower reaches of the Seine, to match the high
standards elsewhere in Europe. Over the past decade, the practice of protecting
and extending the riverine habitat as part of land drainage schemes, by
the Bavarian water authority, has been taken on elsewhere in Germany. As
part of these schemes, buffer zones of between 15 and 20 metres wide on
either side of watercourses are set aside for trees and wildlife. On Altmuhl,
a tributary of the Danube, herons now breed in the huge wetland and woodland
habitats that were artificially created 10 years ago as part of a water
transfer scheme; they now form a reserve, safe from all uses, including
fishing and hunting. On the River Isar, a channel 10 kilometres long, complete
with alluvial woodland, is being created as part of a hydroelectric scheme.

In Switzerland an ambitious programme to re-create river habitats is
being planned around Zurich, and in Austria 15 kilometres of the River Marchfeld
are being improved for nature conservation. Even in Poland, where there
is less money for such enterprises, there is an official policy to protect
and extend the biological corridors along the river systems, and a conservation
strategy is being planned for the Masurian lakes in the north of the country.

In Britain, the two years since the water industry was privatised have
seen an encouraging consolidation of good standards of river management.
Almost all the regions of the National Rivers Authority have a conservation
officer. In the Severn-Trent region, the authority has an annual conservation
budget of £600 000 and a conservation staff of 12. The Thames region
is about to embark on the largest river engineering scheme ever to be integrated
with conservation principles in the UK – a new channel to relieve flooding
in Maidenhead that will amount to a second River Thames, 11.5 kilometres
long, flowing from the pleasure grounds of Cliveden to the playing fields
of Eton. Reed beds, woodlands and damp meadows will all be created as part
of the project. An overall conservation strategy is now being considered
by the board of the NRA. These are just the latest manifestations of what
has proved one of the more satisfactory conservation success stories of
the past decade.

Jeremy Purseglove is a senior landscape architect working for the civil
engineering firm of Mott MacDonald in Cambridge. His book Taming the Flood,
a history and natural history of rivers and wetlands in Europe published
in 1989, is available as an Oxford paperback.

* * *

The Prime Minister . . . and Britain’s arcane drainage boards

One major thing blots the record of British river management: the survival
of the internal drainage boards. These boards, dominated by exclusive groups
of farmers, are continuing to destroy aquatic habitats. And yet they have
John Major, the Prime Minister, as a vice-president of their central organisation,
the Association of Drainage Authorities.

As the heirs of the medieval Courts of Sewers, the boards are responsible
for draining Britain’s lowest-lying land for agriculture, with the exception
of the areas around the main rivers, which are the responsibility of the
National Rivers Authority. That the boards have survived the reforms of
water privatisation in 1989 and the setting up of the water authorities
15 years before is a tribute to the strength of Britain’s agricultural lobby.
Also, the time needed to sort out the arcane controversies of lowland drainage
have kept them low on the parliamentary agenda.

The boards collect rates from everyone living in their area, whether
or not these ratepayers benefit from deep drainage of the region’s agricultural
land. Thus the seaside towns of Burnham in Somerset and Caister-on-Sea in
Norfolk, which pay rates to the NRA towards the cost of their flood protection,
must also contribute to the bills of their local IDBs. Similarly, National
Power subsidises the IDBs in the Trent valley because of its power stations,
and the Avonmouth industrial estate funds the South Gloucestershire board.

The IDBs were at the heart of controversies in the 1980s to drain ecological
sanctuaries at Halvergate on the Norfolk Broads and on the wetlands of the
Somerset Levels and the Derwent Ings in Yorkshire. Though conservationists
now sit on a number of the boards, including the one responsible for the
Derwent Ings, there are still anomalies. For instance, the Royal Society
for the Protection of Birds, the largest landowner on West Sedgemoor, in
Somerset, has long been excluded from the West Sedgemoor IDB, which is responsible
for one of the most ecologically important parts of the Somerset Levels.

Fairham Brook, just south of Nottingham, used to be a fine fishery lined
with ash trees. That was until 1988, when it was substantially lowered,
gutted and stripped of vegetation by the Fairham Brook IDB. In 1989 the
Knottingley-Gowdall IDB in Yorkshire moved onto the Willow Garth nature
reserve and dumped dredgings over areas of new tree planting, having been
explicitly asked not to damage the site by the landowner, the Yorkshire
Wildlife Trust. Not far away, watercourses were stripped out in 1990 by
the Market Weighton IDB and the River Wiske IDB, which cover parts of Humberside
and Yorkshire, without regard to the basic principles of conservation management.
These activities make a mockery of environmental efforts such as those of
the Spalding IDB, which helped to write a manual of ditch management for
the Nature Conservancy Council before the council’s reorganisation.

Nearly 10 years have passed since Lord Buxton of Alsa, speaking in the
House of Lords, condemned the boards as ‘this country’s only independent
rating authorities . . . a sort of Monte Carlo or Vatican City within the
realm, a state within a state. Their power, privilege and immunities are
frankly amazing’. The RSPB and the Council for the Protection of Rural England
have called for the abolition of the boards and for their responsibilities
to pass to the NRA and to private landowners. Yet, they are still with us,
their rating anachronisms intact. Does John Major – the leader who has called
for a classless society – realise that he is fronting an organisation in
which voting strength is proportional to the amount of property an individual
owns? If the government really means what it says about democracy and about
the environment, it should sweep the IDBs away.