Across Europe last year, the sound of rivers changed. A record 603 dams, weirs and barriers came down across 21 countries, according to the annual count by Dam Removal Europe, reconnecting more than 3,700 kilometres of waterways, 11 per cent more than the year before. Sweden alone removed 172 barriers and Finland 143, while Iceland joined in for the first time in its history, dismantling a long disused dam on the River Melsa so fish could once again swim from the mountains to the sea.
Most of these are not the towering dams of postcards but small, forgotten blockages, obsolete weirs and culverts that have quietly chopped rivers into pieces for a century. Remove one and the river remembers itself: salmon and eels return within seasons, gravel starts to move, wetlands refill, and the whole waterway breathes again. Europe has now bound the work into law, aiming for 25,000 kilometres of free flowing rivers by 2030. Somewhere tonight a fish is passing a place its great grandparents never could. May the record fall again next year.
Our short take: figures from the Dam Removal Europe annual report, reported by CNN.