Last week’s inaugural London leg of the international RISE fly-fishing film festival wasn’t notable just for its fishy sequences (though there were also plenty of those to keep the hardcore anglers amongst us happy).

No… what impressed us was the way the festival opened with a showing of Charles Rangeley-Wilson‘s new environmental film for WWF UK: the next stage of the Rivers on the Edge campaign which launched earlier this year.

As Charles also says over on Caught by the River:

Chalkstreams are unique.  A globally rich, significant and amazing habitat.  But many are on the edge of survival.  Abstraction licences were given when no-one thought the pumping of water would have an impact…

But what price a river?  A river is priceless.  Especially if it is possible to have healthy rivers and an adequate supply of affordable water.

Overall, the message is clear: in the dry south of England, we all somehow need to use less water, and recognise the value of what we do consume and flush down our drains.

If we don’t, chalkstreams like the Wandle (which would scarcely be flowing at all if it weren’t for Sutton & East Surrey‘s water recirculation system on the section south of Goat Bridge, or the input of treated sewage effluent from Thames Water‘s Beddington works from Goat Bridge north to the Thames) won’t have much of a future.

It’s a big problem. But luckily it’s something we all have the power to influence.