Freshwater Restoration

Restoring rivers and wetlands can’t just happen site by site. It requires taking care of the whole area of land that drains into a river, not just one isolated stretch, tackling several causes of degradation at once, reconnecting habitats to each other and setting up solid, long-term monitoring.

This policy brief provides recommendations for national authorities, river basin managers, and restoration practitioners to support National Restoration Plans, required in the context of the EU Nature Restoration Regulation. It brings together insights from four BiodivRestore research projects:

• COSAR, on societal and ecological outcomes from river ecosystem restoration
• ForestFisher, on conservation and restoration of Amazonian forest-frugivorous fish interactions
• FreshRestore, on human impacts on freshwater ecosystems
• RESTOLINK, on restoration success across biomes

This brief is part of a series of eight policy briefs about Nature Restoration.

Key messages:

• Citizen-science, stakeholder involvement, and structured knowledge exchange complement scientific monitoring while strengthening community engagement and communication between researchers and practitioners.
• Ecological benefits depend on species movement and habitat connections across freshwater systems. Network-scale restoration planning helps improve freshwater connectivity, which is needed to support resilient freshwater restoration.
• Across Member States, shared technical guidance, standardised monitoring protocols, and interoperable data systems support consistent restoration implementation.
• River restoration success is strongly influenced by catchment conditions, surrounding land use, and the scale of intervention.