SERP makes a splash in the media

Late August saw a flurry of activity in and around Wedmore . Within the space of a few days, SERP appeared in both The Guardian and on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. For a local project rooted in classrooms, riversides, and village halls, such national attention is significant. It tells us that what began as a community effort to restore Somerset’s eels is increasingly recognised as part of a much larger story: how people, science and culture can align to repair the damage done to landscapes and the creatures that inhabit them.

In Print: An article in The Guardian

The Guardian’s feature began where so much of our work begins: on the Levels. Its reed-fringed waterways were described as a 'glinting inland sea – haunting and half forgotten'. From there, the piece traced a story of abundance and loss, recalling a time when eels filled the rhynes and ditches, sung about in pubs and paid as rent to Glastonbury Abbey, before turning to the near-collapse of their numbers.

Against this backdrop, SERP was portrayed as an attempt to weave the past into the present: it was 'science, folklore and community creativity' bound together in pursuit of recovery. Members will recognise the details: sixty eel tanks in local schools last year; straw ropes laid across barriers for glass eels to climb; river blessings and rope-making workshops in the community; and then, on a more technical level, citizen science that samples DNA from waterways.

Vanessa Becker-Hughes, one of our founders, was quoted saying: 'Sometimes we do science, sometimes we do a river blessing. But it’s all about connection'. That word, 'connection', ran through the piece from start to finish . It is the thread that links Feargal Sharkey amplifying our work on social media to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall becoming our first official 'eel legend'. It ties the practical act of testing for eel DNA to the symbolic act of telling stories in a village hall.

Perhaps most movingly, the article closed on a note of hope. 'Each spring tide still brings new arrivals', Vanessa said. 'The eel is not just a ghost of the past - it is a key to unlocking something vital in the present'. For members, that line will feel familiar. But to see it published in a national paper ensured that thousands of readers encountered the same conviction that drives this project: that restoration is possible, and that care grows where memory is rekindled.

Read the Article

On Air: An appearance on the Today show

The next morning, Radio 4’s Today programme offered a different sort of platform. In conversation with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, SERP’s work was reframed as a national concern. Radio is intimate in a way that print is not. The listener hears voices, hesitations, emphasis. The urgency of the eel’s decline and the hope of its recovery are carried not by imagery but by tone.

What emerged in that interview was the sense that Somerset is a testing ground for ideas with relevance far beyond the county’s boundaries. If local communities can mobilise around a creature as elusive and enigmatic as the eel, then what might be possible for other endangered species? If folklore and story can be turned into instruments of conservation, what other cultural resources might we rediscover?

The presence of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the conversation added weight. As a broadcaster who has long drawn attention to the relationship between food, ecology and culture, his questions situated SERP within a wider debate about how society values the natural world. By the end of the segment, listeners would not only have heard about Somerset’s eels, but also about the broader principle that communities can, and must, act when species and landscapes are under threat.

What this means for SERP

For members, these appearances are golden opportunities. They validate the work already being done in schools, along rivers, and within community groups. They open new channels of support, attract new volunteers, and remind decision-makers that local voices are being amplified at the national level. But they are also reminders of something more subtle.

Conservation is as much about meaning as it is about method. To restore a species is to restore the stories, skills and relationships that once surrounded it. By presenting our work in newspapers and on national radio, we are not just appealing for sympathy or funding. We are demonstrating that the eel is woven into the fabric of Somerset life, and that by saving it, we are saving something of ourselves.

Of course, national attention is never an end in and of itself. What matters is what follows. With more eyes upon us, we have a chance to extend our reach, to draw in new allies, to show that the recovery of the eel is more than a local curiosity. It is a model for how communities can reclaim agency over their environments, how folklore can animate action, and how species on the brink can find their way back.

Thank you for being part of this journey. The stories told in the press and on the airwaves are, at their heart, stories about you: the members, volunteers and supporters who have made SERP what it is.