Tonal - Rivers Beyond Sewage

Fighting for Nature with Barrister for the Earth Mónica Feria-Tinta

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 08:34:09 GMT

When we heard that Mónica Feria Tinta was coming to Bath to promote her new book ‘A Barrister for the Earth’, we grabbed our chance to meet her for a conversation on the banks of the Avon. Mónica is a leading expert on environmental and climate change law. She has crafted daring new legal arguments that draw on constitutional, human rights, and international legislation.

We talk about her winning cases have hit the headlines, such as the protection of the Los Cedros cloud forest in Colombia against a Canadian mining company. With no indigenous people inhabiting the forest to represent, Mónica’s client became the forest itself. On the basis of detailed scientific research that showed how irreplaceable the forest was in terms of biodiversity, she successfully claimed them as a legal personality, able to take up law against their own destruction. Los Cedros has become a beacon of hope for people in Britain, as we fight to end the pollution of rivers and desecration of lands and trees. Many groups now look to Rights of Nature law with hope, and in the case of Love Our Ouse (see earlier podcast with Matthew Bird) Mónica was a key advisor.

What are we doing to the world? A lot of harm. Why do we seek happiness in the acquisition of things instead of living a good life? Mónica brings passion to the legal process with values that draw on her Andean ancestry (she moved to the UK as a refugee from the civil war in Peru) and her love of nature in England. She lives in Surrey and speaks movingly about her grief at the loss of her friend the oak tree outside her bedroom window, and how it helped her understand the fight for Chester, a London Plane tree in a coastal town in Essex that was under threat of felling for development.

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Riverfly Sampling with Richard Adeney

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:35:35 GMT

We join Richard on his monthly visit to River Tone in Runnington, to learn how riverfly kick sampling works. For three minutes, Richard kicks up the mud/gravel/stones of the river and catches the creatures that float free in his net, then we count and identify them. Like pond dipping, it’s great fun, but somewhat fiendish because most of the minibeasts are, well, tiny, especially in the winter. It’s also very important, because riverflies are the ‘canaries in the coalmine’ of river health.

There has been a severe drop in numbers of riverflies in our polluted riverscapes since the 60s. We met Richard in a lovely, rural bit of river, and so together we find quite a lot to marvel at, including larvae of Caddis, Mayflies, Olives, Stone Clingers and Damselfly.

Learn a bit about the riverflies' lifecycles, and enjoy this peaceful live-action episode, starring River Tone on a mild damp September day. More info here: https://www.riverflies.org/

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Being a Water Guardian with Dot and Mike Isgrove

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 10:30:51 GMT

Join experienced water guardians Dot and Mike as they conduct their monthly survey of the Standle Stream and Westford Stream, to the west of Wellington. Dot and Mike are fellow members of Transition Town Wellington’s Water Guardians group. Many of us in the group are volunteer citizen scientists testing the water quality in the rivers and streams near us. Managed by the Westcountry Rivers Trust, volunteers visit the same site/s each month to make observations of the current condition of the river and any blockages or problems, note the wildlife and any invasive species. We take samples of river water that we test for phosphate, total dissolved solids (all the potential pollutants that dissolve in water), turbidity (the opposite of clarity) and temperature.

It’s a bit like the river getting a monthly check up with their community nurse. It doesn’t cover everything – perhaps not as much as we would like – for example we can’t test for the kinds of bacteria that make swimmers sick, but it gives an overview of trends and spikes once you have an archive from over the months and years.

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The Poetry of Water with Graeme Ryan

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:54:31 GMT

One for the poets, artists, dabblers and ponderers among you (all those watery allusions). We visited the Tone above Clatworthy Reservoir with Fire River Poet Graeme Ryan and we jumped straight in to comparing our artistic processes and philosophies. How do poets and artists reach out towards the living world or look to their inner living world, and how these connect. What and where is consciousness? How does interspecies communication take place? Do we believe in a creator? Coleridge’s concept of the divinely inspired imagination, which echoes the processes that formed the planet. Life at the quantum level. Poetry as healing, in the context of a damaged world.

What does this all have to do with rivers you may ask? Well, Graeme is expressive and eloquent (did we mention he was a poet) about rivers, and is also inspired by them. He suggests a river is an incredibly dynamic being that is going through metamorphosis all the time. “Where we are caught up in our in our own individual identities and bags of skin, a river is just profligate.” That idea has really stayed with us.

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Gone Fishing in a Climate Crisis with angler Simon Ratsey

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 13:41:23 GMT

Clatworthy Reservoir is a leisure fishery and the main water supply for people in the Tone Valley. It is sparkling but low when we meet there in the summer drought. Simon spent much of his youth fishing on the River Tone and, once it was created, on Clatworthy Reservoir. He is, in his own words, “obsessive” about weather and about fishing. He has kept detailed records on both these topics for decades (counting, for example, all the tiny pond snails in a trout’s stomach, daily rainfall and temperature).

Simon paints a uniquely broad and detailed picture of how the climate crisis and the introduction of invasive species can devastate an aquatic ecosystem. In the 60s and early 70s, Clatworthy was abundant with diverse life. Now largely empty, the fishery stocks the lake with large, fat Rainbow Trout for the benefit of anglers. The fish lose weight till they are caught.

Link to Simon’s paper on the ecology of the lake

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Crimes and Misdemeanours on our Waterways with Oliver Hill

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 17:30:24 GMT

Olly’s job is to find and solve the causes of river pollution. Every misconnected pipe contributes to damage. In a rural area like Somerset, with thousands of small farms and houses with private water, slurry and sewage systems, it’s challenging to stay on top of it all.

As we walk around the lanes and fields about a mile upstream of Taunton’s official bathing place he points out some recent problems – a nursing home that had wastewater pipes going straight to the river, a vast dairy farm which leaked slurry, an illegal dump of soil in the river. From wild swimmers to migrating salmon and the invertebrates and gravel they depend upon, the whole ecology can suffer 'death by a thousand cuts'.

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Love and learn your rivers by subscribing to new episodes :)

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TONAL - Farming, Soil and Water with Joanna Uglow

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 12:10:46 GMT

Soil scientist and environmentalist Jo says she has her dream job, because working for the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group is where she can make the most difference. If the Environment Agency is the stick, FWAG are the carrot, helping farmers find ways to work with nature as they grow food, and access the funds they need to support the changes.

We get granular (pun intended) about soil, farming practices and crops, as we circle and visit the rather sad Hillfarrance Brook - one of the tributaries of the River Tone in ‘poor ecological status’. In this seeming rural idyll problems can be harder to root out, because they are widely dispersed and easily hidden. FWAG’s new project “Upper Tone 360’ hopes to do just that, and so bring health back to the brook, and the river it feeds.

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TONAL - Pioneering Rights for Rivers with Matthew Bird of Love Our Ouse

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 10:27:02 GMT

Love Our Ouse made headlines all around the world when their motion to develop a charter of rights for the River Ouse was passed at a Lewes District Council meeting back in 2023. “It was this torrent of interest… globally. I’ve lost track of all the stuff we’ve done, but one that stands out is talking to Al Jazeera about rights of the Sussex Ouse!”

Two years and innumerable hours of work later, with the support of a passionate team of collaborators and organisations, international lawyers and local citizens, the Council passed a pioneering charter that enshrines eight rights of the River Ouse. Matthew talks about how it came about, and what needs to happen next to bring these words into practice.

The charter is an inspiration and perhaps a blueprint for other communities seeking to celebrate, protect and act for their river.

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TONAL - Meeting River as a Living Being with Peter Reason

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 10:29:55 GMT

Peter Reason generously invites us into his (normally solo) ritual visit with the confluence of the Rivers Avon and Frome at Freshford, sharing his mantra and his invocation to the rivers. He speaks movingly about his solitary practice of meeting with rivers as living beings, and the ongoing co-operative enquiry that accompanies it - 'Living Waters'.

In the two hours we spent together with the rivers we were talking, but it was at least as much the minutes spent in quiet observation and reflection that made it resonant. Peter talks about how the world speaks in a symbolic register through, for example, creaturely visitations (six kingfishers!). He tells how this work has led him from humanist to animist philosophy.

Peter Reason is Professor Emeritus at the University of Bath and previously Director of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice, and an international leader in the development of participative approaches to inquiry. His work links the tradition of nature writing with the ecological crisis of our times. His books include Spindrift: A wilderness pilgrimage at sea, In Search of Grace: An ecological pilgrimage, and most recently (with artist Sarah Gillespie) On Presence: Essays | Drawings; and On Sentience: Essays | Drawings.

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TONAL - The Story of Sewage with Wessex Water's Matt Wheeldon

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 13:47:35 GMT

We spent a morning with Matt Wheeldon, Director of Infrastructure Development at Wessex Water, at the Bradford on Tone sewage treatment works. He’s a passionate advocate for change in our sewage system – ‘We’ve got a rainwater problem, not a sewage problem.’

As we got deeper into the topic, it seems we have a politics problem, a development problem, a consumer problem, a carbon footprint problem, a farming problem, a knowledge problem. Lots of problems!

As far as actual sewage goes, it isn’t rocket science, but it is expensive, in carbon terms as well as in ££. Follow our trip around the treatment works and our wide ranging conversation about it all.

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TONAL - The Rare and Mystical Eel with Vanessa Becker Hughes

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 14:22:40 GMT

Vanessa Becker Hughes is the founder of the Somerset Eel Recovery Project. As we walk along the riverbank at the confluence of the Tone and Parrett near Burrow Mump we discuss the mysteries of eels, who begin and end their lives in the Sargasso Sea on the far side of the Atlantic, yet need to find their way back to a stream or waterway near you.

Vanessa went eel fishing as a child with her grandfather and now inspires and educates people to help eels (now on the ‘red list’ for species in danger of extinction) and connect to nature through building a relationship with them. SERP’s work includes bringing tanks of glass eels into classrooms and making straw ropes that help young eels climb up the many river barriers that currently cut them off from their homes.

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TONAL - On Salmon, Art and Activism with Anne Marie Culhane

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 12:24:41 GMT

Anne Marie Culhane is an artist who works with Jo Salter and others on the wonderful project Tidelines, which brings together arts, science, action and research, working with communities and the public, to celebrate and care for the Exe estuary and coast, and to find ways to adapt and respond collectively to the changes caused by climate breakdown and species loss.

Anne Marie relates the poignant story of the Salmon, who hang out in the Exe estuary while they adapt from salt to fresh water, before they swim upstream, or try to, where the few extraordinary survivors who leap over fifteen weirs and escape the predatory seal get to spawn in the beautiful shaded upper reaches of the Exe. The Tidelines project Salmon Run is a community relay race, and ultramarathon for the ultrafit, along that 45 mile route, that raises awareness of the salmon and their plight.

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TONAL - What Otters Teach Us About Rivers with Dr Liz Chadwick

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 09:05:30 GMT

Dr Liz Chadwick has led the globally important, 35 year-long study and archive called the Cardiff Otter Project since 2004. She and her colleagues and doctoral students autopsy and preserve samples from the bodies of otters who have been found dead (usually they have been run over) across the UK.

As Liz shows me the lab and the archive, we discuss the main focus of their research - toxicology, critically important to our understanding of rivers because chemicals accumulate in otters bodies, and reveal the changing state of the rivers over time. Liz talks about the worst kind of pollution - Persistent, Cumulative and Toxic. Sewage, for all its faults and yuk factor, is none of these per se. PCBs were banned in 2001 but still turn up in all the otters. Otters were nearly wiped out in the UK by DDT type pesticide use, and though populations have recovered since they were banned, these toxins are still present in all otters livers, just in lower concentrations. PFAs are the contemporary equivalent, the ‘forever chemicals’ of our pans and waterproofs. Fire retardants are another source. As one specific chemical is banned, another is invented. We urgently need to CHANGE this terrible game.

The Otter Project stores tissue from the otters collected in a freezer archive, as a resource for future investigation. Questions will arise and techniques will be invented that make the collection a potential time machine of otter, and river, knowledge.

We talk about difficult choices, the hormones and medicines people take that would be hard (impossible?) to give up, but leach into rivers and negatively impact on aquatic species. We also talk about the much more fun enquiries they are leading on, such as how DNA testing of otter spraint has built a picture of otter diversity around the country, and given some glimpses into individual otter activities.

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TONAL - On River Connection, Pilgrimage and Healing with Jane Embleton

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 10:55:14 GMT

Jane introduces her work - as a river pilgrim, healer, wise woman, spirit practitioner - through telling the story of how the river called her one Winter Solstice, through the actions of three dogs. As we walk along a disrupted part of the river in Nynehead, Jane offers insights into her path, her profound connection to land and river, and describes the significance of healing work at the level of spirit.

Jane lives in Ashbrittle, at the headwaters of one of River Tone's tributaries that forms a boundary between Somerset and Devon. As a healer and pilgrim she has walked the Tone three times, from source to sea, sea to source, source to sea.

Tonal explores water issues nationally with a special focus on the River Tone in Somerset. Each podcast episode is a riverside conversation with someone who has a specific personal or professional relationship to water and the river, building a broad base of knowledge from many distinctive perspectives.

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TONAL - On Legal Personhood and River Guardianship with barrister Paul Powlesland

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 11:30:38 GMT

An inspiring conversation about how DIY action is the driving force behind changes in the law. If you want your river to have legal personhood, to have rights, act as if it already did!

Paul Powlesland is one of the founders of Lawyers for Nature. He fights and campaigns for the rights of nature, especially trees and rivers. He is also a River Guardian for the River Roding in London, and Founder of the River Roding Trust. He acts on the river's behalf by contesting planning applications, planting trees, litter picking, creating habitat for biodiversity, walking the river to find problems such as the influx of Japanese knotweed and the unlisted sewage outflows, hassling the Environment Agency...

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TONAL - On Flooding and Community, with Dr Bel Deering

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 12:57:31 GMT

This episode deals with the difficult topic of flooding, and how to build resilience: in people, buildings and communities. Dr Bel Deering is the community engagement officer for Somerset Rivers Authority. Her PhD was on the recreational uses of graveyards, a hint that the conversation contains many flashes of quirky humour alongside the serious stuff. Somerset Rivers Authority is a partnership organisation set up in response to the devastating floods of 2013-14 in the Somerset Levels and Moors. Any errors are the speakers' own.

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TONAL - Watery Wellington with author and activist Anita Roy

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:58:31 GMT

Feral Practice goes backyard exploring around the waterways of Wellington in Somerset with Anita Roy, one of the dynamic leaders of Transition Town Wellington. Anita shares her passion for the watery history of woolen cloth making in the town, and the current (and currant) successes and future plans of TTW, including the forest garden in Fox's Field and plans for a new wetland. Don't miss the end, with Anita's concept of 'pond consciousness', which brings self and world into harmony.

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TONAL - Pollution and wild swimming with MP Gideon Amos

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:57:44 GMT

MP for Taunton and Wellington Gideon lives in central Taunton and swims most Saturdays after Park Run, so he is passionate about the River Tone. He helped to run the successful campaign to gain bathing water status for the river in French Weir Park. Gideon and Fiona discuss the Lib Dem calls for Ofwat to be abolished, plus a gamut of water-quality issues including sewage, planning, farming, dogs, retrofitting, ecocide and raft racing.

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TONAL - Queerness, neurodiversity and beavers with artist James Aldridge

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:57:03 GMT

Feral Practice walks and talks with artist James Aldridge. Exploring an area of recently flooded land to the east side of Taunton, the artists discuss Aldridge's 'Queer River' project and other ideas that intersect in their work - around water, diversity and creativity.Being recently flooded, the Tone was embodying the ‘de-canalisation’ of thinking that the artists discuss - how it is important to loosen ideas around what a river is and what a human is. And how we, through practices that decenter the human, can learn from other creatures.

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TONAL - Dirty Water with Helen Wakeham

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:56:29 GMT

A generous and wide ranging conversation about water, mostly dirty water, with Director of Water for the Environment Agency Helen Wakeham. Tackling in detail and giving historical context to the (all too literal) topic of shit in the river, as well as road runoff, farm runoff, PFAs chemicals and plastics. Including practical tips and future ambitions, this is a realistic and well informed deep dive into river pollution, asking what do we want for water, and how much are we willing to change to get it?Helen lives on a boat in Bristol, enjoys several different river craft, wild swims, and has made a thirty year career in water. Water is her obsession. She is delighted that water is finally getting the attention in deserves, but life at the EA is not comfortable.

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TONAL - Otters with Jo Pearse of Somerset Otter Group

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:55:50 GMT

Feral Practice learns to spot signs of otters - that is slides and spraint 💩 - along the Taunton-Bridgwater canal and finds out more about otter life from Jo Pearse of the Somerset Otter Group. Question - what does otter poo smell like? The answer may surprise you! Jo goes into delighful detail about the otter's life and habits, including how anal jelly (😳) helps protect the otters gut from fish bones. We learn the different kinds of peril otters are in, and how in death they contribute to river research.

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