In East Sussex, a chalk stream in Lewes is being “redirected” to restore its natural flow and create a public wetland.
The Cockshut is a 1.9-mile-long chalk stream that flows at the foot of the South Downs in Kingston and joins the Ouse River in Lewes before flowing into the sea. Last week, diggers after breaking through an artificial levee allowed water from the creek to flow into the 7-hectare (17-acre) wetland area.
The project is the result of an initiative shared by the Lewes District Council, the Ouse and Adur Rivers Trust (OART) and the Lewes Railway Land Wildlife Trust, which aims to redesign and realign the creek into a new channel, restoring its natural flow and reducing the risk of flooding.
The director of the OART, Peter King, said the new channel would “allow the water to move through the system a lot slower” and “increase the landscape’s capacity to hold water”
According to Stewart, a professor of ecology at the University of Sussex, one of the most important outcomes of the project would be the removal of a large floating mat of parrot’s feather, an invasive non-native plant that clogs up the stream, “outcompeting native aquatic plant species and reducing the oxygen in the water”.
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