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<DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><DIV><DIV><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN STYLE="text-decoration:underline;"><SPAN>Background to the Water Environment Fund</SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN><SPAN>The Water Environment Fund is made available by Scottish Government and administered by SEPA to fund projects to help restore the river environment across Scotland by improving the physical condition of rivers and easing barriers to fish migration. SEPA works in partnership with local authorities, land and structure owners, fishery trusts, conservation bodies and other partners to deliver an annual programme of projects. </SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN><SPAN>WEF physical condition projects repair damaged urban rivers, targeting socially deprived urban areas. They bring environmental benefits including restoration of natural form and processes and enhancement of biodiversity and habitats, and also benefit the communities that live there, by creating accessible green river corridors, improving wellbeing, helping rivers contain flood waters and improving climate resilience.</SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN><SPAN>WEF fish barrier easement projects increase the amount of habitat accessible to Scotland’s native migratory fish by removing and easing historical barriers to migration such as redundant weirs. This helps to protect and improve endangered fish populations, restore the natural environment and create new opportunities for angling, tourism and recreation. </SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN STYLE="text-decoration:underline;"><SPAN>Details regarding the layer and caveats</SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN><SPAN>The layer identifies by a point, locations of future, current and complete physical condition and fish barrier easement projects.</SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN><SPAN>• The ‘future opportunities’ given here are early-stage potential opportunities identified for fish barrier easement and physical condition projects, which will be subject to further work to determine their feasibility and therefore are not all certain to progress to project delivery.</SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN><SPAN>• Physical condition projects are identified using a single grid reference however by their nature apply to a river reach (or reaches).</SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN><SPAN>• Data is a snapshot as of December 2022 and subject to future updates.</SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 11 0;"><SPAN><SPAN>• Due to the impacts of the cyber attack on SEPA systems our records may be incomplete and / or contain errors which we will endeavour to resolve.</SPAN></SPAN></P><P STYLE="margin:0 0 0 0;"><SPAN /></P><P><SPAN /></P></DIV></DIV></DIV> |