A critically endangered mussel from England's Lake District is getting a second chance, and it should be of interest to anyone who has paid for a Brita filter. This UK government announcement, made in January 2022, came after Natural England and the Environment Agency committed part of an £11.6 million fund, shared across three separate nature recovery projects in England, to a five-year, £3.8 million restoration project on the River Kent in Cumbria specifically, aimed at rehabilitating its population of freshwater pearl mussels, the species that can filter up to 50 litres of water per day, quietly cleaning the water for fish, eels, and otters downstream. Fifty litres per mussel, per day. That's a striking number for an animal most people will never see, doing a job most people never think about.
What should a river in Cumbria matter?
