26 May 2026

An ecologist says it will take 20 to 30 years for a stretch of River Lugg in Herefordshire to recover after being damaged by a local farmer.

John Price was jailed in 2023 for illegally removing tonnes of gravel from the riverbed to build a road and horse yard at his home and tearing out 71 trees.

He was ordered to pay £600,000 and to restore the damage he had done.

"It's amazing the damage that a human being can do in a very short amount of time," said ecologist Richard Fishbourne.

The River Lugg is home to six protected and endangered species, including common otter, Atlantic salmon, white clawed crayfish, brook lamprey, shad and bullhead.

It flows into the River Wye, and in 1995 it was made a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The farmer admitted using bulldozers and diggers to remove gravel from a mile-long stretch of the river by his farm in 2020 and 2021.

At the trial, Natural England described the damage as the "worst case of riverside destruction" seen by the organisation.

As part of his sentence, Price was ordered to re-plant trees and restore the riverbed and banks, with the Environment Agency and Natural England overseeing his work.

We visited the site with Herefordshire ecologist Richard Fishbourne, to see how the restoration project was going.

Fishbourne is an environmental designer who helps communities to restore natural spaces and work with wildlife.

"There's no sign of life, there's nothing in the water here now," he said.

"It takes tens of years, decades, to build up this wonderful community of species and habitat and it can all be destroyed in a moment.

"It's going to take 20 or 30 years to come back to anywhere near the extent that it was."

"Impoverished landscape"

River gravel beds are where insects and fish lay their eggs and the young grow.

We spent two days at the site but we did not see any sign of the protected species: the Atlantic salmon, the wild brown trout, and grayling.

Fishbourne said he was worried about the lack of insects in and around the water.

"There's nothing here, it's an impoverished landscape really.

"I'd expect to see fish moving, fish rising, in the old days you'd see fish topping all over the place, you'd see a lot more flies as well, none of that is here anymore."

Emma Johnson, West Midlands Deputy Director for Natural England, said the damage done by Price was a "serious environmental concern and the site and wildlife will take a long time to fully recover to a healthy state."

The Environment Agency and Natural England said their monitoring shows the river's condition is improving, with trout, bullhead and minnows present, alongside kingfishers and sand martins.

Price did not want to be interviewed about the restoration project.

The Environment Agency and Natural England have put logs in the river to help create gravel bars and banks where fish can spawn.

The agencies told us they have inspected this site four times in three years, they are happy to work with citizen scientists, and they will continue to monitor the ecology.

"Four visits isn't enough really," said Fishbourne. "If we're going to commit to prosecuting someone who's degraded the landscape, then we should make sure that they atone by monitoring that landscape sufficiently afterwards.

"To make sure that things get back to a reasonable state, you need more effort in those after interventions, that monitoring is so important."

In court in 2023, Price admitted that he had used the gravel from the river to build a road and horse exercise yard at his home.

In defence, he said he also wanted to stop nearby homes from being flooded.

The river levels through Kingsland have not reached the same heights since the damage was done, so it is not possible to prove or disprove his view.

Price has replanted some trees and installed buffer strips of grass and flowers between the ploughed farmland and the river.

The Environment Agency and Natural England said some of the trees died due to a lack of rain, so more planting will be needed.

"Some of this new growth that's occurring is a really good sign, it means that there's natural regeneration there," said Fishbourne.

"It should help to bind the bank together so it's stopping erosion from some of these excessive floods that we're experiencing more and more.

"It's really important to have a mix of biodiversity in this space."