Healthy, living rivers sustain people and nature. By removing dams, reflooding wetlands, reversing channelisation, and releasing wildlife, Rewilding Europe and its partners are revitalising rivers in rewilding landscapes across the continent.
The importance of wilder waters
Rivers harbour some of the richest biodiversity on Earth and provide a wide range of essential benefits to both people and nature. Healthy, free-flowing rivers, which are well-connected with surrounding landscapes, offer a wide range of habitats for wildlife species. They also purify water, reduce the risk of downstream flooding, and strengthen resilience to climate change.
Yet most European rivers are now degraded — polluted, channelised, and fragmented by dams, dykes, and weirs. These changes have caused severe declines in biodiversity and water quality, along with the loss of vast floodplains and wetlands. With climate change bringing new challenges, we urgently need a new relationship with water – accepting it into our landscapes again, and rewilding it where we can.
Dismantling dams
In collaboration with the rewilding teams in our portfolio of partner landscapes across the continent, Rewilding Europe is working to restore rivers and the areas around them on a growing scale. We hope that by showcasing how rivers can be brought back to life — and the wide-ranging benefits this delivers — we can inspire others to follow in our footsteps.
Rewilding rivers means giving them the space and freedom to manage themselves, with dynamic, natural processes such as the free flow of water and flooding returning them to health. One of the most effective and cost-efficient ways of doing this is to remove dams. Over the past few years, with financial support from the Open Rivers Programme, rewilding teams in several of Rewilding Europe’s rewilding landscapes have stepped up efforts to revitalise rivers by dismantling artificial barriers.
Liberating Central Apennine rivers
In October 2024, the Rewilding Apennines team oversaw the removal of five small dams from the 44-kilometre-long Giovenco River, which flows from south to north through the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park, in the heart of the Central Apennines rewilding landscape in Italy. As a result, an 11-kilometre stretch of the river is now flowing freely again for the first time in decades.
Building on this success, a 30-metre-long dam on the Liri River, into which the Giovenco flows, was removed in September 2025. This intervention liberated just over 11 kilometres of the Liri, marking another major step towards restoring the landscape’s natural waterways and enhancing connectivity for aquatic and riparian wildlife.
“Removing dams, which really choke rivers, is critical in the Central Apennines,” says Rewilding Apennines team leader Mario Cipollone. “Demolishing these barriers allows rivers to breathe again and better support nature and people. In the face of climate change, we must treat free-flowing freshwater as a precious resource to be cherished.”
“In the face of climate change, we must treat free-flowing freshwater as a precious resource to be cherished.”
Mario Cipollone
Team Leader, Rewilding Apennines
Supporting wildlife comeback
Restoring the free flow of water on the Giovenco and Liri rivers has reopened migration routes for vulnerable and important aquatic species such as the white-clawed crayfish and Mediterranean trout, while benefiting an array of other wildlife. On the Giovenco, trout have already recolonised the stretch of the river upstream of where the lowest dam was removed.
The river restoration efforts of the Rewilding Apennines team go beyond dam removal, with ongoing releases of Mediterranean trout and white-clawed crayfish complementing the natural return of both species. Since 2021, the establishment of crayfish breeding centres across the landscape has seen nearly 8,000 juvenile white-clawed crayfish released into local rivers, while around 4,000 juvenile Mediterranean trout were released into a tributary of the Liri, called the Romito, in 2025, in collaboration with the Zompo Lo Schioppo Nature Reserve. The team have also removed around 400 invasive Atlantic brown trout from the Romito to aid Mediterranean trout comeback.
Breaking barriers in the Nordic Taiga
Dam removal efforts are also freeing rivers and boosting aquatic biodiversity within the Nordic Taiga rewilding landscape in Sweden. In 2025, supported by funding from the Open Rivers Programme, the Rewilding Sweden team oversaw the removal of three dams — the Mjösjödammet, Fräkentjärnsdammen, and Malsjödammen — in the Vindel River catchment, restoring 102 kilometres of free-flowing waterway. This followed the removal of four dams in the same catchment in 2024, with two more scheduled for demolition in 2026.
Most of the dams removed in the Vindel River catchment are a legacy of Sweden’s long history of industrial-scale forestry, which saw many rivers channelised and dammed to enable logs to float downstream. In some places, wooden flooring was laid along riverbeds to ease the passage of timber, further disrupting natural river processes.
“Almost every river here was once cleared of natural obstacles and dammed to float timber,” says Rewilding Sweden field officer Isak Edström. “Those days are long gone — and our mission now is to bring the rivers of the Nordic Taiga back to life.”
Towards living rivers
Beyond dam removal, the Rewilding Sweden team are undertaking additional work to help rivers heal — removing wooden flooring and returning boulders and stones to riverbeds. In 2025, the team restored stretches of four rivers in the Vindel River catchment — the Rödån, Brokbäcken, Abramsån, and Kamsjöbäcken — with a total length of more than two kilometres.
Like the Rewilding Apennines team, the Rewilding Sweden team are also working to support wildlife comeback through targeted releases. As part of wider river restoration efforts, around 200,000 juvenile brown trout have been released in various rivers in the landscape in 2024 and 2025, through collaboration between Rewilding Sweden, local municipalities, and fishing management organisations — including the by Vindelälvsfiske (the Vindel River Fisheries Foundation). The overall goal is well-connected, vibrant waterways with abundant trout populations, which will not only help to revitalise nature, but provide economic benefits through sustainable fishing — thereby helping people and rivers thrive together.
Scaling up
Healthy rivers are vital lifelines, not just channels of water. By working with nature rather than trying to control it, river rewilding provides cost-effective, long-term solutions to some of today’s most pressing environmental and social challenges — boosting biodiversity, buffering climate change, and enhancing human well-being. This is why Rewilding Europe is working to scale up river rewilding across the continent.
In many of its operational landscapes — from the Central Apennines to the Nordic Taiga and beyond — Rewilding Europe and its partners are giving rivers a helping hand to heal. The ultimate goal is for vibrant rivers to manage themselves — with dynamic natural processes renewing old habitats, creating new ones, and supporting abundant wildlife. To find out more about how you can support river rewilding, visit our Rewilding Rivers page.
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