AROUND 150 people joined a protest against River Wye pollution on Monday night - on the same day the UN issued a dire warning about global warming and climate change.

Wild swimmer Angela Jones organised the event at Ross-on-Wye’s Rope Walk, which saw some 20 swimmers and ‘Grim Reapers’ form a cortege for a floating ‘Death of the Wye’ coffin that was launched onto the river.

The event followed one a week earlier in Monmouth, and was designed to raise awareness about pollution in the river, which campaigners say is being choked by phosphates and nitrates that turn the water murky with algal blooms.

Angela posted photos on her www.run-wild.co.uk Facebook page and said: “The Coffin Procession Continues.

“On a day the IPPC (intergovernmental panel on Climate Change) focused our attention on Global Climate Emergency, a more local ecological emergency was taking place on the Wye.

“Thank you to all that showed their support and joined me and coffin to bring attention to the diabolical way we treat our rivers and seas!”

The event followed a month-long source to sea ‘Walking With The Wye’ pilgrimage highlighting the pollution problem, which came through Ross two weeks ago.

Angela, who appeared on BBC1’s Panorama programme about how pollution is ‘killing’ our waterways earlier this year, and helped Guardian columnist George Monbiot with his new online film Rivercide, said: “I want to draw attention to the diabolical way we are destroying the Wye through pollution, and a coffin seems fitting, as it’s bereavement on a huge scale and pains me to the core.”

The river is currently seeing higher levels of phosphate than normal, with campaigners saying livestock sewage and huge poultry farms upriver in Powys and Herefordshire - where there could be as many as 22 million chickens - are polluting the Wye and its tributaries.

The Welsh Government has now designated the whole of Wales a “nitrate vulnerable zone” (NVZ) and introduced stricter rules on the storage and spread of slurry, in a bid to tackle river pollution.

But NFU Cymru has won the right to ask a judge to intervene, claiming its policy is unlawful and will cost farmers thousands of pounds to comply with.

Farms that come under the new regulations will need to upgrade their slurry storage facilities, allowing a capacity for a five-month supply, and cover it to reduce the amount of rain that can fall on it.

Slurry spreading will also be limited between August and January.