Europe’s largest water conservation project
Improve Aquatic LIFE
Improve Aquatic LIFE is the name of Europe’s largest water conservation project aimed at restoring aquatic environments in wetlands, lakes, rivers and coastal waters in nine different counties in southern Sweden.
Improve Aquatic LIFE is largely funded by the EU and by the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and other project partners.
Source-to-sea actions
Over seven years, hundreds of actions will be implemented to improve the situation of threatened species and restore affected aquatic environments from source to sea. Migration barriers will be removed, habitats restored and more natural flows recreated to help threatened species, improve the resilience of water systems to climate change, enhance biodiversity and provide access to ecosystem services such as recreation and nature tourism.
Improve Aquatic LIFE is a win-win project with high sustainability values for nature and future generations.
17 collaborating partners
17 different partners are involved in the project. These are the County Administrative Boards of Värmland, Västra Götaland, Halland, Skåne, Blekinge, Kronoberg, Jönköping, Kalmar and Östergötland, the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Karlstad University, the University of Gothenburg, Lund University, Helsingborg Municipality, Tingsryd Municipality and Swedish Anglers Association.
500 nature conservation initiatives in nine different counties
Project areas
Over seven years, from 2024 to 2031, the project partners, together with many other stakeholders, will implement more than 500 actions to improve our aquatic environments and create viable populations of threatened species. They will remove migration barriers, construct fauna passages or other types of fishways, restore habitats in rivers and coastal waters, and improve the water-holding capacity of water systems by restoring floodplains along rivers, wetlands in forests and agricultural landscapes, or coastal areas.
The Improve Aquatic LIFE project will carry out several major initiatives from source to sea. In the forests of Värmland, far up in the Göta River catchment area, more than 50 road culverts that currently act as barriers to migration will be repaired, and a three-hectare eelgrass area will be created at the Stenungsund coastal Natura 2000 site. Far up River Rönne å in Skåne, habitats for salmon and sea lamprey will be recreated and in Skälderviken, where River Rönne å flows into the sea, stone reefs will be recreated where “stone fishing” was once carried out, which emptied areas of stones and boulders. The measures will restore lost habitats, thereby strengthening populations of threatened species, increasing biodiversity and helping to boost key ecosystem services such as recreation, nature tourism and support for local economies.
Protecting endangered species
Target species
The Improve Aquatic LIFE project will use a variety of intervention methods to improve the situation for many species. In a large number of rivers, lakes and coastal waters, habitats will be restored to create more viable populations for several threatened species such as pearl mussels, thick-shelled mussels, salmon and sea lamprey, which are the project’s target species. Several other species will also benefit and become more viable through the extensive remedial work that the project partners will carry out.
Two endangered mussels
The pearl mussel and the thick-shelled mussel are two critically endangered mussel species. Mussels play an important role as natural purifiers in our waterways and where there are regenerating populations, the water quality is usually good and there is a rich biodiversity. The Improve Aquatic LIFE project will take action to improve the situation of mussels. In several rivers, including River Lyckebyån, River Bräkneån and Bråån, the populations of pearl mussels and thick-shelled mussels will be strengthened by infesting their host fish with mussel larvae in the rivers. This is because mussels depend on host fish to reproduce and the two species prefer slightly different host fish. It is therefore important to also take measures in the habitats of their host fish to increase the abundance of mussels.
Two endangered fish species
The stocks of migratory fish species such as salmon and sea lamprey are both in a critical situation. The Improve Aquatic LIFE project will take action to improve their situation. These include removing migration barriers and building fishways to improve connectivity, i.e. free passage up and down the river from source to sea. To further improve conditions for salmon, sea lamprey and a wide range of other fish species, habitats such as spawning and nursery areas will also be restored in a number of rivers and coastal areas within the project. Overall, fish survival and production may increase from current levels in several project watercourses
17 cooperating actors
Project partners
Reporting from the projects
Latest news
Read about events in our project areas and interesting facts about the target species.
