Keeping taps on and boosting wildlife: the race to protect the Lake District’s water

Maddy and Danny Teasdale from Ullswater Catchment Management CIC work with farmers, landowners, the Environment Agency and local contractors to plan nature-based interventions. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

The mountainous region surrounding Helvellyn, the Lake District’s third highest peak, gathers a substantial portion of the rainwater that supplies homes, businesses and public buildings throughout the north-west of England.

“The fact of the matter is that the most precious resource, the thing that we really cannot rely on anywhere else, is the water,” says John Gorst, a catchment partnership officer at the water company United Utilities, which has 7.5 million customers in the region.