Important Freshwater Areas Wetland Opportunity Areas

Headstart

Catchment Project

Working with the water industry, Headstart aims to kickstart nature recovery using the pragmatic, science-driven strategy of starting in the headwaters and working down.

What is Headstart?

Despite decades of investment, improvements in the water quality and biodiversity of river systems have stalled. Traditional approaches, focusing on larger rivers, are struggling to make headway against pervasive pollution from multiple upstream sources.

Headstart aims to harness the power of headwater catchments to drive nature recovery across England and Wales. Focusing on smaller, upstream freshwater habitats, the project takes a targeted, cost-effective, scalable approach to improve water quality, rapidly restore biodiversity and strengthen ecosystem resilience.

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Shallow water flowing fast down a rocky stream on a hillside, trees behind.
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- Headwater stream in Scotland.

Why headwaters?

Though they’re individually small, headwater streams are ubiquitous, and together their catchments cover more than half of England and Wales. Restoring headwater catchments – including their networks of ponds and wetlands – will kickstart nature recovery across the river network and the wider landscape.

Headwater catchments are easier to restore, because their small catchments mean pollution sources are fewer, more identifiable and easier to manage. Restored headwaters will be:

  • Sources of resilience – networks of unpolluted headwater habitats can act as refuges for sensitive plants and animals, and a bridgehead for recolonisation of downstream reaches.
  • A visible success story – because they’re small and respond quickly to restoration, significant improvements can be seen within years rather than decades, demonstrating the effectiveness of well-targeted investment.

The Headstart approach

Headstart focuses on re-establishing pristine networks of freshwater habitats within headwater catchments, by mitigating wastewater and agricultural pressures, restoring headwater streams and wetlands, and creating clean water ponds.

By applying this set of well-tested measures in appropriate catchments across England and Wales, the water sector can create pockets of unpolluted freshwater, as refuges for sensitive freshwater species and engines for nature recovery in the wider landscape.

The Headstart approach is less about the ‘what’ and more about the ‘where’. The measures which comprise the Headstart approach are well-understood, and have been widely trialled, with good evidence for their efficacy. The unique advantage of the Headstart approach comes from bundling these measures together, and focusing them on small headwater catchments, where collectively they will transform the water environment.

Photo of a Lesser Diving Beetle in water.
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- Lesser Diving Beetle - © Neil Phillips

What will Headstart achieve?

1 Significant biodiversity gains through cross-catchment creation and restoration of clean water habitats.

2 Persistent improvements in water quality and freshwater ecosystem resilience.

3 Rapid progress towards nature recovery goals.

Read our reports