4 Life on the Thames is getting wilder

Walk the Thames in 1957 and you wouldn’t have seen much wildlife: parts of Britain’s most famous waterway were considered ‘biologically dead’. But things are looking up. A new report from the Zoological Society of London found sharks, seahorses, eels and seals living in the river’s tidal miles, where researchers recorded 115 fish species and 92 bird species in total, including avocets – the back-from-the-brink bird seen on the RSPB logo. It’s not all good news: there’s microplastic pollution and climate change, and like many rivers it’s being polluted by raw sewage. That should ease with the opening of the Thames Tideway Tunnel in 2025, aka London’s super sewer, which should continue the healing of a river which Andrew Terry, ZSL’s Director of Conservation and Policy, describes as ‘home to myriad wildlife as diverse as London itself’. Take a look for yourself, with a walk on the Thames Path which tracks the river from source to sea.