Please vote for our Snake Lane project in this year's Dam Removal Europe Award!

Amazing news: we’ve just heard from the World Fish Migration Foundation that our Snake Lane fish passage project has made it to the top 5 contenders for the Dam Removal Europe Award 2022, which has just opened for a public vote.

Snake lane wri with DRE scissors
The Snake Lane weir before removal (with a little help from Photoshop)

The story of our partnership project with the EA, which used diamond-tipped cutting equipment to slice up the huge concrete Snake Lane weir on Derbyshire’s River Ecclesbourne, and replace it with a rock ramp, can be read here, complete with before and after photos, and an interactive storymap.

We finished work in November 2022; as if to prove the value of our efforts, in January 2023, a spawned-out hen salmon was found dead, upstream of where the weir had been. (As some of our Conservation Officers like to say: Unbuild it, and they will come).

Now, our Snake Lane project has reached the final stages of this prestigious international Dam Removal Europe Award, which will be announced on 18 May in Manchester — and we need your help.

This year, for the first time, a public vote will count for 50% of the overall score, with voting open from 3 — 17 April 2023.

Apart from the glory of taking part, and maybe winning, the Dam Removal Europe Award comes with a €10k cheque to spend on our next weir removal. We’ve got some great ideas already!

So, if you like what we’ve done at Snake Lane, we’d be really grateful if you could vote for us on the Dam Removal Europe website.