NEW plans submitted to Bradford Council aim to attract more lampreys, eels and fish into the River Aire.

The DNAire project is an attempt to improve biodiversity in the river, and aims to do so by building a number of fish passes on weirs in the river to allow more species to pass through.

A planning application has now been submitted to the Council calling for a “Larinier fish pass with separate eel and lamprey pass” to be built on the weir next to Salts Mill, next to Roberts Park.

The project is an attempt to return the rivers to the rich ecological habitat it was before the Industrial Revolution, where pollution from the district’s factories killed off many of the species in the river.

Details of the efforts to introduce more fish species, particularly salmon, have already been publicised, but this application reveals that the project will also aim to reintroduce to the river eels and lampreys - a prehistoric, bloodsucking fish that was on earth 200 million years before the dinosaurs.

Lamprey’s do not have jaws, but instead have a circular sucking disc lined with teeth. River lampreys migrate upstream from the sea to spawning grounds in autumn and winter, similar to salmon.

The species is infamous for apparently being the cause of King Henry 1’s death. The King was fond of eating the sea creature, a delicacy at the time, and some accounts record his death as being due to a “surfeit of lampreys.”

The planning application has been submitted by the Environment Agency, which is working with the Aire Rivers Trust on the DNAire project.

The £1.6 million scheme, which will be funded by the National Lottery, will see fish passes built on four weirs - including the Saltaire weir, which are the last major barriers to fish movement between the North Sea and Gargrave in the Dales to spawn.

The planning application says: “These weirs form an important part of the historic landscape of the Aire Valley, and the industry they supported played a key role in the heritage of the river but also in its ecological decline.

“Through the construction of fish passes we will not only reconnect the ecology of the river but also tell the story of the rivers past.”

It says the passes will allow for “the free migration of these iconic species for the first time in 200 years.”

The fish pass will be made of two concrete walls to form a channel. The walls will be clad in stone that the application says “will be in harmony with the World Heritage Site and local heritage considerations.”

The channel base will have herring bone baffles to disrupt and slow the flow of water to enable fish to pass up and down the weir. The fish pass and the eel and lamprey pass, made up of studded tiles that allow the eels and lampreys to climb the pass, will be separate parts of the same construction.

The application says that if the application is approved, construction work is likely to take place between March and June 2020.

The project would also see the agency “engage people with the natural, industrial and cultural heritage of the river,” provide training opportunities in environmental matters and improve the water framework directive status of the river.

A decision on the application is due in February.