From the archive
28 Oct 2026
On the Giovenco River in Italy's Central Apennines, the day the barriers came down was the end of a long queue. The Rewilding Apennines team removed five of them in 2024 and reconnected 11 kilometres of river, but around three years passed between the first application and the demolition. Local anglers support reconnecting the river, and the team is working to strengthen native Mediterranean trout populations. The team then turned to the Liri, the river the Giovenco feeds, and in September 2025 took out a dam 30 metres long.
On the Giovenco, a national park had to agree to the work, and so did the offices responsible for archaeological, artistic and landscape heritage. Those came on top of the tiers that Mario Cipollone, who leads the team, says a removal can pass through: the municipality, the region, and national bodies whenever a river runs across a regional line. Rewilding Europe's account of the wider process puts studies of ownership, flow, sediment, flood risk and wildlife ahead of the permits, and monitoring on either side of the demolition.
One lesson the team is carrying forward concerns sequence. For a sixth weir on the Giovenco, it is drawing up the feasibility study and the detailed executive plan side by side, not one after the other. Rewilding Europe reckons that could save months and stop a gap in funding from opening between the two. The approvals still have to be won; what changes is that the two documents no longer wait on each other.
The removals being prepared in the Central Apennines, and in four other Rewilding Europe landscapes, have backing from the Open Rivers Programme, which pays for taking out small obsolete barriers. In 2025 more than 600 barriers came out across 21 European countries, and many thousands of obsolete ones still stand. On the Polish side of the Oder Delta, the team has counted at least twenty on a single river, the Wołczenica, and is starting with two of the more straightforward ones.
Before commissioning any survey of an old weir, list every body that must sign off: the municipality, the region, national bodies if the river crosses a regional boundary, and any park or heritage authority. Commission the feasibility study and the executive design together so the funding does not stall between them. The Giovenco's first removals took about three years from application to demolition.
Rewilding Europe · Read the source