Across Europe, rivers are finding their voice again. A record 602 dams, weirs, culverts, and sluices were removed from the continent’s waterways in 2025 C.E., reconnecting 3,740 kilometers (2,324 miles) of river that had been cut off by artificial barriers, according to a new report from Dam Removal Europe.
At a glance
- River barrier removals: Europe dismantled 602 barriers in 2025 C.E., an 11% increase from the previous year and a sixfold rise since the first official count in 2020 C.E.
- Free-flowing rivers: Sweden led all countries with 173 removals, followed by Finland with 143 and Spain with 109, while Iceland and North Macedonia each removed barriers for the first time.
- EU restoration goal: The 3,740 kilometers reconnected in 2025 C.E. bring the EU closer to its target of restoring 25,000 kilometers of rivers to their natural state by 2030 C.E.
Why rivers need room to breathe
For centuries, Europe’s rivers were treated as infrastructure. Mills, hydropower stations, navigation channels, and flood controls all demanded structures that interrupted flow, blocked sediment, and cut off the migratory routes fish had used for millennia.
The ecological toll has been severe. Freshwater migratory fish populations across the continent have fallen by roughly 75% since 1970 C.E., a decline scientists attribute in significant part to the fragmentation caused by river barriers. More than a million barriers break up Europe’s waterways today, with tens of thousands now considered obsolete — no longer generating power, no longer serving navigation, but still standing in the water.
Chris Baker, director of the European branch of Wetlands International, put it plainly: “For centuries, Europe treated rivers as engines for economic growth — damming them for mills and hydropower, straightening them for navigation, and burying them beneath cities. We built our prosperity by fragmenting our rivers, but the ecological price has been enormous.”
From Iceland to North Macedonia: who is doing the work
One of 2025 C.E.’s most symbolic removals happened in western Iceland, a few miles downstream from a lava field on the River Melsá. A dilapidated dam that had once powered a farm — and had long since stopped generating electricity, the powerhouse last used as a sheep shelter — was broken apart with hydraulic peckers in December.
It was officially Iceland’s first dam removal. Hamish Moir, a river engineer with the Scottish firm CBEC, which provided technical support, called it “really rewarding” to see the river restored to its natural state.
In North Macedonia, the Kriva and Pčinja rivers were reconnected — another national first. In Norway, an obsolete 6-meter-high dam on the Vinstra River was dynamited out of existence. More than three-quarters of the barriers removed across Europe in 2025 C.E. were under 2 meters tall, many of them cheap and straightforward to dismantle once a community decides the ecological cost of keeping them outweighs any remaining benefit.
A trend accelerating across continents
Dam removal is not a uniquely European story, though Europe is moving fastest. In the U.S., where more than 550,000 dams and 300,000 road-related barriers fragment streams — and an estimated 70% of dams have outlived their average design life — 100 dams were removed in 2025 C.E., according to data from American Rivers. In China, conservation efforts have led to the removal of hundreds of dams on the Yangtze River in recent years.
In Europe, the legislative framework is strengthening the push. The EU’s nature restoration law, which entered into force in 2024 C.E., explicitly calls for barrier removals to reconnect rivers and lakes. Dam Removal Europe, a coalition of environmental groups, tracks and advocates for the work.
Baker said public understanding is shifting too: “People increasingly understand that obsolete dams are not monuments that must stay forever. Many are simply ageing industrial relics causing ongoing ecological damage.”
The connectivity conundrum
Removing barriers is not without complications. A study published in 2024 C.E. found that artificial barriers can, in some circumstances, slow the spread of invasive species — meaning that reconnecting rivers may also open new routes for invasive threats to travel upstream or downstream into ecosystems where they hadn’t previously reached.
Ellen Donovan, a biologist at Queen’s University Belfast and the study’s lead author, noted that “while initial improvements in connectivity can be rapid, stressors such as invasive species can eventually accumulate and erode longer-term conservation value.” She added that with careful preparation, monitoring, and long-term management, those risks can be minimized.
The 2025 C.E. record is a genuine milestone. But with more than a million barriers still dividing Europe’s rivers, and fish populations still a fraction of what they once were, the work is far from finished.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Capital Post
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
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- The Good News for Humankind archive on biodiversity
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