From Britain to the Czech Republic, European nations have been restoring rivers to their natural state — taking down dams, removing levees, and reviving floodplains. For a continent that long viewed rivers as little more than shipping canals and sewers, it is a striking change, by Fred Pearce:  “…Britain, for instance, has promised to restore some 1,500 kilometers of rivers. It has 2,700 projects in its National River Restoration Inventory, 1,500 of them already completed. One of Spain’s largest rivers, the Duero, is being cleared of dams and other man-made obstacles. On France’s longest river, the Loire, where two decades ago activists from all over Europe successfully battled to prevent construction of the Serre de la Fare dam near Le Puy, engineers are now tearing down existing dams, such as the Maisons-Rouges. Denmark’s largest river, the Skjern, is getting back some of the marshlands at its mouth, after meanders were reinstated and artificial banks lowered to allow seasonal flooding of arable fields that have now been returned to grass meadows…The Danube, which runs west to east, from Germany’s Black Forest to its delta on the Black Sea, is the most international river in the world, with a catchment that includes 19 countries. The river has been cut off from 80 percent of its floodplain. But today much of the floodplain is slated for restoration.”