How much is the river Thames worth to Oxfordshire? What about when you add up all the pubs, nature reserves, gravel pits, history, culture and the water we drink? How does £3m sound? That is the amount that the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust (BBOWT), is bidding for to create a new network to market the Thames from Wiltshire to Oxford.

Environment reporter Pete Hughes met BBOWT’s Thames vision development manager Richard Bloor to learn how he hopes to make a day by the river so much more

The pubs will teach customers about local history, the nature reserves will tell visitors about local literature and the gravel extraction firms might even be able to benefit the wildlife.

That is the vision of environmentalist Richard Bloor.

The Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust’s Thames vision development manager wants to create a network of every business, landowner and charity on the Thames, from Wiltshire to Iffley Lock in Oxford.

It’s not often you hear an environmentalist defending gravel extraction, but DrBloor is a different kind of environmentalist.

“This has always been a productive landscape and we want it to continue to be,” he says, “for gravel extraction, for agriculture or preventing flooding.

“It’s about having a smart approach to managing the land and helping maintain a sustainable local economy.”

In January, Dr Bloor convened a meeting of 30 organisations which he wants to help him realise his dream, including Oxfordshire County Council, Thames Water, the RSPB, Natural England, the Environment Agency (EA) and the National Farmers’ Union.

He calls his project “Reconnect”, as in reconnecting people with the river which defines their landscape.

Speaking in a third-storey office at BBOWT’s Littlemore headquarters, overlooking the landscape carved out by the Thames for miles around, he says: “There’s an awful lot happening, but it’s not necessarily joined up. It’s not looking at the whole landscape as a connected whole: we’ve got water going all the way through this area and water defines everything.

“You can’t maximise your impact on any area unless you’re looking at it as a whole: biodiversity; recreation, entertainment.”

Dr Bloor will submit a bid for £3m to the Heritage Lottery Fund by the end of May. He will have to wait until October to learn if he has been successful.

If he is, he hopes to start a number of pilot projects to connect businesses, landowners, academic researchers and charities along the route.

A good example of one of those dream projects is Chimney Island near Bampton.

From a BBOWT point of view, the little island surrounded by two branches of the Thames has the potential for new wetland creation which could provide a habitat for wader birds, crayfish and amphibians.

But wetlands also have the potential to clean fertiliser out of water making it purer for water firms like Thames Water to deal with and potentially saving them money.

Wetlands also absorb a lot of water so can lower the risk of flooding in other areas.

Dr Bloor says: “We’ve already got some data on these things from a PhD student working at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology at Wallingford.

“The difference we could make to flood capacity could be huge but we’d need to get that first evidence to go to Government with.

Oxford Mail:

  • Punting along the Thames at Folly Bridge in Oxford

“With Reconnect we could try to put a number on that benefit.”

When you’re creating new wetland, you could also create an interpreted walk to tell the story of that part of the Thames, an education programme with local schools and get more visitor features in the area.

Dr Bloor says: “The idea is that whoever you are, you’ll get something deeper from your visit to the Thames.”

Then, he says, when you have eight or nine projects like that, you link them up with each other to tell the whole story of how people have lived off the Thames from the first settlers on the gravel terraces to the modern-day gravel pits, water companies and boat hires.

But there’s also a whole, intangible side to the benefits we get from the river which you cannot put a number on.

Trust spokeswoman Wendy Tobitt said: “Go along to Salters Steamers in Oxford on a sunny day and ask people who are hiring a boat for the day why they are on the Thames and they’ll give you all sorts of reasons: we fancied messing about on the water; you can see all the birds; you have a picnic; you paint, you have a pint in the pub, you sunbathe then you come home.

“They have had a really nice day out, and that matters just as much as the engineer at Farmoor Reservoir who cleans the silt out of the water.”

As Dr Bloor puts it: “Before I joined BBOWT, I was working on a similar river project in Borneo and Malaysia.

Oxford Mail:

  • A kingfisher is one of the many fixtures of wildlife on the upper Thames

“I had a conversation with a local who told me: ‘you can hook people in by their wallets, but you put down roots by getting to their hearts’.”

And that really sums up the dream behind Reconnect better than anything else: for Mr Bloor this is simply for the love of the Thames.

“For me this whole idea really clicked into place last July,” he recalls. “I went for a walk around the Pixie meadow north of Oxford at about 7pm.

“There was just something about the whole scene with the sun going down behind one of the best wildflower meadows in Europe, this sense of natural healthiness, and there was a pair of curlews in the middle circling around and I suddenly thought, ‘that’s why I’m doing this’.

“And that’s why anyone would do this, on an emotional level.”

The trust admits that in the whole landscape, £3m is a “drop in the ocean”, but the idea is the project will generate money when the ball is rolling.

Dr Bloor is now hoping people will come forward with ideas for things they think should be included in the project.

* To get in touch email richardbloor@bbowt.org.uk