1 Introduction Healthy rivers are critical for human wellbeing, economic and cultural development and global ecosystem function. Human settlements have developed close to rivers (Anderson et al. 2019; Osborne et al. 2008), supported by the ecosystem services they provide (Acuña et al. 2013; Petsch et al. 2023). However, in large part because of their importance to society, rivers are amongst the most degraded habitats worldwide (Strayer and Dudgeon 2010).