People before animals

Let them create more wildlife ponds upstream, so that excess water is captured there and the rate of emptying into flood plains is slowed down. Plant more trees (see Bags list) strategically, dredge the ditches and rivers and (see Elegran's post somewhere) bring back the beavers.

Problem, if not solved, at least alleviated, and we're not bring paid megabucks, and given peerages, to sit on some committee.

Not for supporting insects of course, but being flooded out.

Yes, moles

If what grows well here, as in "loving wet conditions, is anything to go by, these species would do well: pedunculate oak, goat willow, ash, silver birch, sycamore, rowan, holly, bird cherry. Plus others but those dominate and seed like crazy, as do a number of shrubs like hazel.

As do brambles , and bracken, and rushes....

Moles too Jings

I believe willow is very good too and that loves wet conditions.

and at your last two comments, aka.

Oh I thought I'd written 'oak tree' sorry!

Note to self 'remember circumpolar vortex to slip into conversations'. Thanks Bags

It varies depending on the species of tree. Oak is best, I believe, closely followed by things like birch.

Exactly Posie and how many species of insects etc does one tree support? About 280 which provide food for birds!

My comment follows anno's.

Yes. And while we have been getting the storms further south than usual, the USA has been getting a lot more snow and cold than usual because of the same shift in the circumpolar vortex. I love how weather is so (mathematically) chaotic and unpredictable because it illustrates how complex a thing our planet (any planet) is.

I don't think that's actually the case granjura. A farmer on the news last night was talking of the local Action Group who've been trying to get the various agencies to sit up and take notice for over 18 months now. They were very aware that 'warm, wet, winters' are likely to increase due to climate change and that flooding was increasing year on year. They knew what would happen if there was a particularly bad spell of wet weather. That is what 'contingency planning' is all about.

I'm all for creating wildlife habitats, but it seems that all the powers that be had their collective heads up their collectives arses under their wings and couldn't see what was in front of their beaks.

It's the Jet Stream - not the Gulf Stream that has changed its position this year. Usually the north of Scotland and the Northern Isles would be getting the storms.

Apparently mature & large trees absorb approx. 50 to 100 gallons of water each a day. So deforestation of large areas would have a significant impact!

Article in Telegraph summing up the politics of the problem.

To be fair, nobody, Tory, Lib Dem 0r Labour- or even the farmers- could have predicted that the Gulf Stream would change course and just stay over Southern UK and Ireland in the way it has.

Errors were made, that is for sure- but I am not sure the Government of EA can be entirely to blame for what is happening, however disastrous, can they?

Water is such an essential thing for all humans- and to my mind should never be privatised. It belongs to all.

Our visibility and our astonishing creativity does not make us bad. We are actually getting better at being less damaging to other parts of nature as our own living conditions improve. It's because improvements away from mere survival give us more time and energy to redress any imbalances that we may, inadvertently or otherwise, have caused.

But anyway, the point here is that the Environment Agency doesn't appear to have been fit for purpose when it comes to protecting the environment of the animals, including the human ones, on the Somerset Levels. Humans are part of the environment. It is not necessarily a bad thing when our needs dominate or appear to dominate the environment we live in. The EA, the RSPB, and many other groups, appear to think it is a bad thing. That's where they are going wrong because they are forgetting that humans are natural animals too.

I know water privatisation is dear to your heart, jess, and i'm not contesting your figures or that things have improved. But, given the improvement of the non-privatised Scottish water authority, I can't help but think that the water authrotities in England and Wales would have improved over the last two or three decades without privatisation too.

We'll never know. It just seems quite likely. A lot of other things have improved too.

Not that I care one jot about whether English and Welsh water supplies are privatised because my caring about it one way or the other doesn't and wouldn't make a scrap of difference.

Just reading above. I like the word I've invented – authrotities – so I'm leaving it.

I think the problem with the EA is that it wasn't just protecting the status quo, and balance between man and wildlife but tipping the balance against humankind in favour of wildlife.. It had a deliberate policy of returning drained land to the sea and marsh.

As I said we have a man made landscape. The forest that covered almost all of Britain disappeared mainly in the Neolithic. We had as much cleared land in 1066 as we had in 1918. The idea that the medieval period saw the vast clearance of forests is a myth. If the EA were in pursuit of a return to some mythical natural landscape, they should not be limiting themselves to drained land but should be doing nothing and letting urban areas and all farmland return to the waters and woodland.

The Thames at London was in prehistoric times a very wide shallow river. Why not let the water reclaim it and restore it to marsh. When Westminster Abbey was built the site was known as Thorney, or Thorne Island, just as on the Somerset Levels, a small area of gravel in the middle of a marsh. Think what a habitat it will provide for birds and other aquatic wildlife.

The penny just dropped POGS ...of course the dredging stopped well before and cut in funding for the EA. Sorry, bad brain days recently!

I wonder though about the poor wildlife which has been drowned out too. How far can the endangered water vole swim to find dry land with knowing which way to go. Ditto hibernating hedgehogs. Hares? And what about the animal whose burrows had flooded such as field mice, rabbits, foxes and badgers?
I'm not putting these before humans but if this anti dredging policy was to protect wildlife then it's patently been a disaster for them as well as the human population.

Water quality in England and Wales improved hugely since privatisation. See graph on page 19 of this pdf. Huge amounts of effort and money have gone into achieving this since privatisation, whereas before it the network was suffering a slow decline of a largely Victorian infrastructure. The graphs for bathing water quality, burst pipes etc will be similar.

webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130123162956/http:/www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/Environmental-key-statistics-Dec-2011.pdf

And actually so have many other aspect of the environment such as pollution of rivers,

durhamjen the Cardiff barrage was built a long time ago. Swansea are going to get a modest tidal lagoon. Are you thinking of the Severn Barrage, which is indeed opposed by wildlife lobby. I disagree with them and think it should go ahead with efforts made to provide substitute feeding areas for birds.
I don't think anyone if disputing your analysis of the history of the Somerset levels pogs but the future presents a different set of challenges. The Telegraph article seemed to be based on the opinion of one Lord.

Or the animals about the humans?