Neat agricultural fields have been transformed into a thriving wetland habitat following a three-year project to reconnect part of a river to its floodplain.The work, at the National Trust's Holnicote Estate in Somerset, has seen a 1.2km stretch of the River Aller filled in to create a new seven-hectare area of wetland.It is the first time this approach, named Stage 0 and pioneered in Oregon in the US, has been attempted on a main river at this scale in the UK.

Neat agricultural fields have been transformed into a thriving wetland habitat following a three-year project to reconnect part of a river to its floodplain.The work, at the National Trust's Holnicote Estate in Somerset, has seen a 1.2km stretch of the River Aller filled in to create a new seven-hectare area of wetland.It is the first time this approach, named Stage 0 and pioneered in Oregon in the US, has been attempted on a main river at this scale in the UK.