Published May 2002
LGVN Animals - News from the The Wildfoul and Wetlands Trust UK

Welcome Home Ratty - Water Vole Latest Update

During the UK summer of 2001 we reported on the release of several hundred water voles into safe wild areas in an atempt to re-generate the population. Here's an update.

Also known as the famous "Ratty" from the book The Wind in the Willows, the vole has fallen by 90% in the last decade. Four organizations - the Environment Agency, Mammals Trust UK, Oxford University's wildlife conservation research unit, and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, owners of the London Wetland Centre - have been working together to try to restore the voles to areas where they once thrived. 100 were released within specific river catchments were mink are under control. Mink were farmed to make coats but many have escaped over the years or released by misguided animal liberation groups. They have all but destroyed native river habitats and in turn the water vole.

Martin Senior of the London Wetland Centre told Looking-Glass "We can now confirm a number of voles have bred successfully. As part of ongoing research undertaken by WildCRU (Oxford University) water vole traps have been laid around suspected vole haunts and checked daily. The results so far have been very encouraging with many voles re-trapped, weighed and released - but the exciting news is that several juvenile individuals have been caught that do not have a microchip (all voles released were micro-chipped for identification purposes) and are too small to be from the original release group".
"Although water voles are capable of having up to 5 litters of young a year, it was not expected they would breed so soon", says Martin. "It is now important the young voles continue to build up fat reserves in order to survive the colder winter months ahead."

In 2005 the State of Britain's Mammals Report was published, which says that the water vole is "a contender for the UK's most rapidly declining mammal". But experts are confident that with programmes such as those carried out by The Wetland centre, the rodent may have a chance of survival. In some areas where habitat enhancement has been put in place to help water voles breed, numbers have tripled over a three year period.

When LGVN receives more information on the water vole's progress we will publish results here.

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