Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Water for Wildlife Project aims to make a major contribution towards the restoration and protection of wetland wildlife, delivering practical conservation benefits for a range of important species and habitats and raising awareness of the importance of wetlands as a living landscape for people and wildlife.

The Project's major funders are the SITA Trust and the Tubney Charitable Trust, but our work is also supported by local partners including United Utilities, the Lowland Derbyshire Biodiversity Partnership and Derbyshire County Angling Club.

We are currently focussing our efforts in the Derwent catchment and the Dove catchment. Our work includes programmes to monitor the health of local wetland habitats and the species they support by repeat surveys of a range of species. Wetland habitats in these catchments support species such as the otter, water vole, white-clawed crayfish, brown trout, Atlantic salmon and great crested newt. However, degraded habitat and non-native species such as Himalayan balsam, Japanese knotweed, American mink and Signal crayfish threaten to reduce the biological diversity of these two river catchments.  We are working with partner organisations and local landowners and land managers (for example angling clubs) to ensure that important sites are protected, degraded habitats are enhanced and new wetland sites are created.

More widely, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Water for Wildlife Project works in partnership with other Wildlife Trusts to raise awareness of the threats facing our native wetland species and their habitats. For example, invasive aquatic plants are an increasingly common problem on our ponds and waterways with some introduced aquatic plants pushing out native species. The All Choked Up campaign aims to halt the sale and spread of invasive aquatic plants.