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Did you know? Trees are river protectors.

  • Writer: The Torrent
    The Torrent
  • Oct 2, 2023
  • 2 min read

There are a lot of reasons to love trees and plants in riparian areas, and maybe, one reason not to. Maybe.

Firstly - what the heck are riparian areas? Riparian areas are the land areas right next to rivers or other bodies of water - basically, the riverbank.

Firstly, native trees and plants in riparian areas stop, or reduce erosion on our riverbanks (erosion means soil and the edges of rivers being washed away). Believe it or not, many trees and plants have an enormous network of roots that, if you laid them all in a line, could be miles long! All of these roots hold the soils on our riverbanks together, so when a storm or flood (or even strong winds) come along, our rivers with lots of trees and plants lining them, are less likely to get muddy and have banks collapsing than the rivers that don't have many trees and plants.



Imagine salmon or trout eggs beneath the gravel in the riverbed. If lots of mud gets washed into that river because of erosion, the mud might smother those eggs and reduce the chances of those eggs hatching. How cool that trees can help to prevent that!

There are other reasons that trees and plants help rivers too. They filter runoff from the land, helping to clean the water before it reaches rivers, they provide food and shelter for lots of wildlife - including fish and insects, they help to keep rivers cool by providing shade against the hot sun and, not just for the benefit or rivers, they store carbon from the atmosphere, which is becoming more important as the carbon dioxide in the air that we breathe increases through the burning of fossil fuels. In that way, trees help to reduce the impacts of climate change.


The above photo shows a healthy river - running cool and clear with lots of help from trees. The photo below shows a severe case of erosion and muddying (siltation) of the water. Much of this was caused by cutting down all of the trees along the riverbank.


So trees are super good to have along our rivers, but I did mention that they may not be so good right? Well, sometimes when we are fly fishing, our back casts can get tangled in bushes and tree branches - and that can be a bit frustrating! But I think it's a very small price to pay for all of the great things that trees bring to rivers. And the best part is - if your favourite river is suffering from logging or tree removal, planting more trees can help to fix them back up! This is a part of a process known as habitat restoration, and we will look at that in an upcoming post.

 
 
 

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