Using river restoration to re-establish invertebrate communities

Vicky Kindemba  (Buglife - vicky.kindemba@buglife.org.uk)

Proceedings paper from the 10th Annual River Restoration Centre Network Conference, 1st - 2nd April 2009

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Abstract

Restoring river habitats for invertebrates requires a range of microhabitats to be re-created within river systems to re-establish rich and diverse invertebrate communities and support healthy river systems. Whilst some restoration projects re-create a limited number of microhabitats, this paper outlines a series of good practice principles that can be used when undertaking river restoration projects to ensure that a range of invertebrate microhabitats are included.

The paper highlights some of the marginal, in-stream and adjacent microhabitats that need to be re-created. In addition, when developing restoration projects, rare and threatened invertebrate species need to be identified within and adjacent to the project area so that their ecological requirements can be accommodated. There is also a need to monitor invertebrates before and after restoration work, as monitoring their status is essential to assessing the success of projects, provides a greater understanding of current techniques, and facilitates the development of improved restoration techniques in the future.

Keywords

invertebrates; maintenance; microhabitats; monitoring; re-creation