Animal droppings found around river embankments (8)
I believe the answer is:
ramparts
'embankments' is the definition.
(rampart is a kind of embankment)
'animal droppings found around river' is the wordplay.
'animal' becomes 'ram' (male sheep).
'droppings' becomes 'pats' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'found around' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'river' becomes 'r' (abbreviation for river).
'pats' going around 'r' is 'parts'.
'ram'+'parts'='RAMPARTS'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ramparts that I've seen before include "Fortified earth banks topped with parapets" , "Defensive walling" , "used defensively" , "defence" , "Earth banks as fortifications topped with parapets" .)