River Ericht Catchment Restoration Initiative
🌐Award-winning initiative bringing blended finance approaches to nature restoration, focusing on Atlantic salmon spawning grounds. Combines riparian woodland restoration, peatland protection, and habitat enhancement. Led primarily by community organizations, addressing the funding gap in nature restoration while maintaining community leadership.
Bioregional Context
Fed by upland burns from the Grampian Mountains, the catchment encompasses a mix of moorland, farmland, and wooded riverbanks. Historically important for textile milling and local agriculture, the River Ericht supports Atlantic salmon, otters, and other native species, but faces pressures from land-use change, barriers to fish migration, and climate-related flooding.
Activities
Strategy Games
From 2023-2025, a strategy game was implemented in the Ericht catchment bioregion. The process began with listening to diverse stakeholders—farmers, anglers, land managers, estate owners, and community leaders—to understand their roles and perceptions. This information formed the basis for a prototype game representing the landscape's resources and dynamics. The games help players visualize interconnections across the landscape, demonstrating how individual actions impact others' livelihoods and environmental conditions.
River Detectives
River Detectives extends the community-science approach toward catchment care. From August 2023 to August 2024, residents researched historic management of rivers, bogs, and lochans—asking what past practices might teach present stewardship. The Flax & Flood strand traced mills, weather, and water—how nineteenth-century climate shifts and extreme events shaped operations and supply. That historical ecological knowledge informs today’s questions. Part 2 turns toward systematic monitoring so communities can describe current river conditions and inform management choices.