An obsolete river barrier will be removed this Friday, September 18, from the Ribeira de Perofilho, in the municipality of Santarém. The intervention is promoted by SOS Animal – Portugal and the Municipality of Santarém, with funding from the European Open Rivers Programme, and aims to restore continuity to the watercourse, as announced in a press release.
According to the same source, even small structures can hinder the movement of aquatic species, alter the natural transport of sediments and contribute to habitat fragmentation. The removal of the barrier thus fits within a strategy of recovering river connectivity.
According to the European Open Rivers Programme, there are about one million barriers fragmenting European rivers, more than 150,000 of which are considered obsolete, abandoned or non-functional.
Dam Removal Europe data also show that, in 2025, at least 603 river barriers were removed in 21 European countries, allowing the reconnection of more than 3,740 kilometres of rivers. Sweden recorded 173 removals, Finland 143, and Spain 109. Portugal reported only one removal that year.
The recovery of free-flowing rivers is also one of the goals of the European Nature Restoration Regulation, which sets as an objective to restore at least 25,000 kilometres of rivers by 2030.
“Restoring nature doesn’t always mean building”
For Sandra Duarte Cardoso, president of SOS Animal – Portugal, the removal of structures that have lost their function can be one of the simplest ways to restore the functioning of river ecosystems.
“For decades we have become accustomed to adding structures to nature. Much more rarely do we ask the reverse question: does this still need to be here? When a barrier has lost the function for which it was built and remains only to interrupt an ecosystem, removing it can be one of the simplest and most effective ways to return functionality to the river. Restoring nature doesn’t always mean building. Often it means knowing how to remove,” she says.
The intervention continues work started in 2024 on the same river, when another obsolete dam was removed in a project developed by WWF Portugal in cooperation with the Municipality of Santarém and SOS Animal, also with the support of the European Open Rivers Programme.
That intervention allowed the restoration of about 2.5 kilometres of river connectivity in the Ribeira de Perofilho.
