The Kit Brook River Restoration is a community-led project to bring the Brook back to good health. Classified by the Environment Agency as in moderate ecological status - where moderate in EA-speak means poor - our brook suffers from all the usual problems of a rural, lowland river, but she clings on as a Sea Trout spawning river, with mazy margins overhung with Alders. And we love her.

Because what every river needs to get well again is love. We all need someone to watch over us. And the Kit Brook team have been dishing out love in dollops. Funding from the Blackdown Hills National Landscape and the Environment Agency has paid for a farm adviser and a river technical expert to visit landowners and farmers.

Leaky dams have been installed to slow the flow and hold water on the land. Cooperative farmers have fenced livestock out of the river, opened their wildflower meadows to the public, installed owl boxes and a hot box for bats. Hedge surveys are underway led by volunteers working with the farmer to create hedge management plans. Community events bring everyone up to speed with what’s going on, what the challenges are and how people can help, and a community survey Nature Matters found out about people’s priorities and their stories about the river.

Volunteer-led river monitoring is a big part of the work with teams of locals assessing water quality, ecology and freshwater invertebrates in collaboration with Westcountry Rivers Trust and the Riverfly Partnership. Member of the group Paul Spearing says, ‘we were fed up waiting for things to change, and tired of being kept in the dark about what was going on.

We made the case that we are the people of the place and we know what’s best for our river. We don’t want to abdicate responsibility or disempower ourselves. We wanted to make a difference. To make rivers better. Of course, we need experts to help us but we can do stuff too.’

Simple things raise awareness about the plight of rivers such as river walks. One such visit was to the local water meadows to see what how water was managed in Victorian times, and to discover what is hidden in plain sight – the infrastructure, sluices, carriers and drains of the most complex type (bedworks) of water meadow. How does this help the river? It affords the opportunity to restore a ‘soup of habitats’ alongside the river with wet and dry areas - but just as importantly it gets the farming and non-farming communities together.

Recognising that a divide does exist between the farming and non-farming communities, the team set up a panel of farmers who faced an audience of mostly non-farmers for a Q&A about the challenges facing farming these days and what we can do to help our farming neighbours. Called Over the Farm Gate it was an opportunity to chew the cud and make new friends. And this was followed a few months later by a similar debate about food and farming.

The group is trialling an app for the Environment Agency making it easier to report pollution incidents. Every child at the village primary has a riverside lesson in river health, and the Kit Brook team support Axe Vale Rivers Association with its Fish Eggs in the Classroom – a superb project to breed Sea Trout for reintroduction, and placing a couple of hundred fish eggs in local schools so the children can watch the eggs transform into fry and then release them into the river.

And the Kit Brook River Restoration acted as a pilot project for a National Lottery Heritage Fund bid made by the three National Landscapes that serve the Axe Catchment. The bid was successful and the Rivers Run Through Us project – to engage the community with their rivers – is now up and running.

As the proverb says you need a village to raise a child. And in the case of rivers it takes a community to save our streams. So, what can you do? You could join your local river group.

Or if you want to get hands-on join one of the river monitoring teams of volunteers and become a citizen scientist. You’ll learn about water quality, freshwater invertebrates, riparian mammals, riverbank ecology and have an active role in making things better. It’s free and training is always provided.

And think about everything that ends up in our rivers. I used to pop my used ‘disposal’ contact lenses down the loo and flush. Now I realise that’s a sure-fire way to send plastic to our rivers. It’s the simple things that can make a difference. Change your habits – and turn off that tap while you’re cleaning your teeth!

Want to get involved? Get in touch at thekitbrook@gmail.com