The European Environment Agency recently released its report European waters - assessment of status and pressures. The report found that water pollution and physical modifications are still affecting the ecology of many of Europe’s lakes, rivers, transitional water bodies and coastal waters. It concludes that these problems are likely to prevent the water bodies reaching ‘good’ status by 2015, the target set by the EU’s Water Framework Directive (WFD).

View the report: http://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/more-than-half-of-eu

RESTORE attended an international symposium in Vienna in September.  The symposium gathered 300 participants to look at research and new solutions for our rivers. If you look at the proceedings you can see the discussions on large hydro power schemes around the world, like Mekong River.  The sturgeon can not migrate along the Danube and other fish struggle to move around our rivers.  At the event the work and cooperation in Austria between river managers and power companies is helping to solve some of these issues.  Discussion consisted of presentations about the benefits of river restoration, upstream and downstream fish migration, environmental flows, modeling and aquatic ecology.  New fish pass cases, combined with reproduction habitats, were presented in some presentations. Jukka Jormola from RESTORE gave a presentation on natural fish bypass channels and work that is being undertaken in Finland. Technical tours were organized to fish passes and a new side channel under construction on the Danube.

Proceedings: http://www.ise2012.boku.ac.at/

Radio 4’s ‘You & Yours’ programme visited the Flood Test Centre in Wallingford, Oxfordshire to discover more about the innovative products involved in flood protection. Listen to the show on Friday 12.20pm: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qps9

The IRF has recently formed a partnership to deliver a European Riverprize for the first time in 2013. The IRF European Riverprize will celebrate successful approaches that have overcome the challenges to river restoration, ecosystem health, water quality and climate change within the social and political context of the European continent.

Judged by a panel of European experts and administered from the IRF Europe office in Vienna, the first IRF European Riverprize will be awarded in 2013 - International Year for Water Cooperation. The prize will be awarded at the European Centre for River Restoration annual conference in Vienna. Please click here for a list of eligible countries.

Applications will be assessed based on a documented river management framework, evidence of social and economic gains, an integrated approach to river management, long-term vision and demonstrated, outstanding achievements in river ecology.

The European winner will qualify as an automatic finalist in the Thiess International Riverprize the following year. PLEASE also add any river restoration case study submitted on to the River Wiki

link to enter prize