The video opens to a wide view of a river turning a corner as it runs from right to left across the screen. The river is fairly shallow and is running through lush green farm land and different types of trees are occasionally dotted along the far side bank. In the medium distance the farmland slopes gently up hill and we can just make out a few sheep in the distant fields. Beyond the fields is a gathering of trees or a small woods. Further into the distance we also see hills – they furthest of which is covered in low clouds, which reach up to meet an overcast sky. We hear water trickling, birds tweeting and ducks loudly and consistently quacking over the backing track; a couple of birds fly into view.

The next shot is of a stream or small river flowing towards the camera. There is low a red brick wall along onside of the river forming a bank as it turns a corner. Above the wall there is rich wild vegetation. In the distance the river flows over and around scattered rocks.

This is followed by a ditch running between 2 fields. There are fences on either side of the ditch and what appears to be newly planted trees surrounded by protective coverings. There are trees on the edge of the ditch and hills in the distance. Overlayed on this scene is the following text in white capital letters:

“New partnerships Achieve more”

The text continues to be displayed over another shot of a faster flowing steam in woodland with stone blocks reinforcing the banks. The camera pans up to a lady in wellingtons, a waterproof jacket and a bobble hat walking down the side of the bank. The shot fades into a close up shot of her facing the camera in front of the river where she begins to speak:

“My name’s Helen Dix, I’m a catchment coordinator for the Environment Agency. I try and make the water bodies of the Ribble, the Douglas and the Alt and Crossens catchments more health by coordinating action on the ground.”

We then see Helen and 4 other team members working together on land nearby, planting new trees and protecting them with protective coverings. Behind them is a field and in the distance there is a hill.

We the see a close up of lots of litter caught at the waters edge along with twigs and branches, including glass and plastic bottles as well as a football, a sign and what appears to be a toilet seat. The overlaying text says:

“In North-West England 78% of water bodies are not healthy.”

We then see another part of the river without litter, the overlaying text says:

“Natural Course is a new project that tackles this problem.”

We then see Helen in front of the river again who continues:

“We need to work closely with our partners and mobilise more funding and Natural Course will help us do both.”

“At this site today we are right by Cow Hey Brook, which is a tributary of the River Ribble, on the Ribble catchment. We’ve got some volunteers here who are planting trees. And the reason for planting trees is that they are just great for water in general.”

As Helen is speaking we see 2 volunteers crouching down placing a protective tube over a newly planted young tree. Taking care to feed its twigs into the tube without breaking them. We ten see a close up shot if a space and trowel leaning up agains a fence, with a bin bag filled with soil and a number of young trees ready to plant. The next shot is a close up of the tip of a new tree poking out of the protective tube, with the river in the background.

We then move to a wider shot of one of the volunteers working to plant trees, and creating a hole in the ground. He explains::

“Some of these alder with quite big roots, you might need to make quite a nice big hole for them. The more root the better really.”

Whilst we see the volunteers continue to plant and protect trees, Helen continues:

“So Natural Course has provided some of the funding for this project and it’s help us secure funding from other locations, other sources. It helps us to achieve our wide goals of improving water.”

We then see Helen speaking to another volunteer. He begins to speak to her:

“It feels good to be contributing to something that’s making a difference.”

We then see this volunteer planting a tree with another volunteer. The other volunteer begins hammering in the support stick into the ground ready to support the young tree. Helen continues:

“This kind of activity os going on all over the Ribble catchment and all over the North-West.”

“In North-West England,” next some rubbish in and around a river is shown with the following statistic “78% of water bodies are not healthy.” We then see various scenes of people in green spaces working together to improve the space are shown with the following text, “Natural Course, is a Life integrated project, pioneering a new way of partnership working.”

Helen and a man walking down the bank of the river. The overlayed text introduces the area as “Rivacre Local nature Reserve”. Helen begins to speak to the man, who is introduced by text as Paul Corner from Healthy Rivers trust. The next shot is a closer shot of Paul speaking to Helen, with woodland and vegetation in the background:

“We did some water testing as part of the early stages of the project and found that there was high nutrient levels in the river.”

We then see a shot of the golf course next to the woodland . A yellow gold flag is sticking out of a hole, not far from a sandy golf bunker. Paul explains:

“What was happening, the golf course was putting a lot of fertiliser and that’s leaching down the hillside and into the river.”

We then see water trickling downhill to the river as Paul explains:

“And during high rainfall it flashes through really fast and ends up in the river so you get high nutrient readings especially just after rain storms, which is when we surveyed. So what we decided to do was look at ways of how we can actually prevent that nutrient from getting there, doing some way of slowing that down.”

As Paul explains: “We put some leaky dams in to slow the water down and allow the vegetation to take up the nutrients.” we see one of the dams made out of logs and twigs across a small stream that trickles down hill into the river.

“We’ve put them in using volunteer labour, using local materials, which has kept the cost right down.”

Paul shows Helen another leaky dam and explains the what the materials are as he points to them:

“Used logs from the oaks, willow steaks and weaved branches in between just to create the structure.”

As he speaks we also get a close up of the the long thin branches weaving in and out of the thicker steaks that have been driven into the ground.

Helen asks him:

“How will you know if the leaky dams have worked?

Paul answers as we see more leaky dam footage:

“What we’re doing is linked to the Natural Course where we’re setting up 3 volunteer programmes at the moment: one’s going to be here, one in Stockport, one in Merseyside, where we’re training volunteers to do citizen science. They’ll monitor the water for any changes in nitrates and phosphates and in turbidity.”

As the background music fades out the next shot fades in. We see a man opening a large, right hand gate on a frosty winter morning. The right gate is made up of metal patterns of leaves and the left gate is made up of metal Dandelion docks. Metal letters sit across both gates at the top and spell out “Gro Zone”. Text overlayed across the footage says: “Citizen science water sampling, Northwich, Cheshire.”

We see another man looking over a frozen pond. Between him and the pond is a small wooden fence. He is standing on some decking. Across the pond is reeds and bulrushes covered in frost, There are vegetables growing on a patch in the background next to a wood hut. In the background there are trees. It’s a bright, crisp morning. We also see a shot of a Robin jump next to a stream, followed by the first man speaking to 4 volunteers all dressed in winter and waterproof gear:

“Me intention for today was to try them out on waterbodies that are easy to get to: so we’ll start off by using the pond, the stream and the fishpond and see what measurements we get from there and compare those and then if we are happy with that, we can take it out onto the river.”

We then cut to 2 volunteers taking water samples from the river. There is a stone bridge with archways to the left of the river, next to the bank the volunteers are standing on. Across the river there is a long line of large bushes down the bank. HE goes on to explain:

“There’s been quite a bit of enthusiasm amongst the volunteers. People have responded well, partly because they’ve got a long affinity with the rivers. Having everybody involved in the actual water testing gives us a chance to really get out there and get to know the rivers in some serious detail.”

We also see a shot of another volunteer plunging a stick into the ice on the pond to make a hole to collect a water sample. We then see a small water sample being held up against a chart with swatches of various shades of pink for comparison.

We then cut back to Helen stood on the bank of the same river at Rivacre Local nature Reserve, she faces the camera and says:

“It’s really important to mobilise volunteers and go out and gather data from various locations, testing the water and doing kick samples. When you combine that with Environment Agency data, and Natural England data it can give us a really clear picture of why a water course might be not as healthy as we want it to be, and then what we can do about it to try and rectify that and increase its health and biodiversity.”

As she speaks we are shown footage of a wide river. It’s the same river as in the introductory scenes, but slightly further down. Across the river are at least 50 stepping stones. They are all block shaped and lead to 5 steps that go up the far side of the bank and into a field. There are sheep dotted across the field and up a hill which meets the trees or woodland we saw in the first shot.

Next we see a distance shot of Pendle Hill with fields in the foreground and a large tree with no leaves. They sky is gloomy but a gap in the clouds shines some light on the tree. Helen continues:

“Natural course is really helping us to achieve our long-term aim of improving water bodies across the North-West”

The background track begins to play and the camera pans from left to right we see the hill in its entirety and some sheep in the foreground. The track fades out along with the shot.

We then cut to a head shot of Keith Ashcroft, UK Environment Agency Cumbria & Lancashire Manager, stood in front of a large mural depicting British industrial history. He begins to speak:

“Natural Course: Our water, our future is just a really important opportunity for us to build on the track record we have in the North-West of delivering fantastic and much improved environment. We’re dealing with a legacy from the industrial revolution. We’ve had a series of fantastic partnership projects over the last 20 years or so, and this is a real catalyst to move things even further forward for the next 10 years.”

The last shot is over a vast expanse of water on a cloudy day. White text fades in that says:

“Natural Course is a LIFE Integrated Project. Life Integrated Projects tackle nig environmental challenges: Water / Waste / Air / Nature / Climate Change. Find out more at the LIFE website: ec.europa.eu/life (opens an external website in a new tab)“

Lasty the LIFE logo fades in and the text: “© European Commission 2017”