YOU CAN HELP SAVE OUR WATER VOLE

ARKive-video-474E7FB2-597A-497F-93E5-B26B14038488

Here he is, a water vole washing his face. His story is not all wind-in-the willows. What have we ever done for him? We cut down the vegetation, his cover and food supply, blocked his streams. And to cap it all kept mink in fur farms to supply coats: great idea until they were released or escaped in the 1950s to pillage out native wild life. with alarming efficiency. They live and hunt near water and can swim well, resulting in them becoming the main predator of the water vole. One female mink can penetrate a water vole burrow with catastrophic consequences, wiping out whole colonies in one fell swoop. Previously, water voles could escape from their predators (weasels and stoats) by swimming. In England we lost 95% of our water vole by the year 2000. But there is something you can do to save our water vole which we still have on our river the Ingrebourne and nearby. This is done by using mink monitoring rafts to establish if mink are present in an area then once detected mink are trapped and humanely dispatched. This we have to do as well as take more care of the river environment. We are the Havering Wildlife Project and are running three workdays to train people in an East Anglian pilot scheme for nationwide watervole conservation.

On our workday you will: be shown how to set up and look after a mink raft, insert the new smart trap, move and launch the raft, operate the remote sensor and go through responding to an alert . We are running three workdays at different locations. The first will be on Tuesday 17th August starting at 10am at Black Bridge which is a short walk from the Visitor Centre at Hornchurch Country Park parking area, and bus stops for the 252 from Hornchurch or Elm Park.

Interested then be sure to email Aisling Woodhead: aisling.woodhead@thameschase.org.uk by the 9th August