Captive water voles born and bred in Cumbria are being released along the River Eden at Sandford Mire near Warcop in March. This is being undertaken by the Cumbria Water Vole Project, a joint venture between Eden Rivers Trust, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Natural England, the Environment Agency and the MoD.
The BBC Spring Watch programme plans to feature this exciting event and television viewers will hopefully be able to see live coverage of water voles near the River Eden in Cumbria.
The water vole, also known as the water rat, is our largest vole, but also our most endangered. Beloved by many as “Ratty” from Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, the water vole is now Britain’s fastest declining mammal.
Intensifying agriculture over the past 50 years has destroyed much of the water voles’ bank-side habitat. Small, isolated populations still exist but are now extremely vulnerable to further threats such as predation by North American mink, or to the effects of floods and droughts.
Cumbrian water voles have suffered particularly severe losses and are in danger of becoming extinct in the county. The Cumbria Water Vole Project aims to reverse this decline and has been in existence since 2003.
Its work includes surveying for water voles, looking for suitable stretches of river for them to live and previously habitat improvement work. This latest venture is the re-introduction of captive bred voles to a series of connected waterways where the bank-side vegetation is just right for them, and also where mink are absent or controlled if they appear.
The last captive stock of Cumbrian water voles were obtained from breeders in Devon in May 2009. These were descendants of voles originally taken from Alston in Cumbria in 2005 and so are of native stock. The voles were kept and bred in cages near Penrith. Water voles do not live very long – only about 18 months – and the major mortality occurs over winter. The remaining 80 or so water voles will now be released at Sandford Mire near Warcop.
This location has been thoroughly checked to make sure that no water voles live there already and to ensure that it has everything a water vole needs to survive. Family groups of voles or single animals will be placed in widely spaced cages staked in place on the river bank. Within 24 hours they will burrow out of these to escape into the wild. They will return to the cages for several weeks and food will be provided for them there to help them survive.
Alison Reed of Eden Rivers Trust said, “It is so exciting to be releasing water voles into the wild in Cumbria and to be given the opportunity to experience setting free those that I have bred and nurtured in the last year. We hope that this population will successfully breed in the wild this summer and help strengthen the numbers of water voles in Cumbria.”
This project has been funded by a number of organisations including SITA Trust, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Environment Agency, the MoD, Cumbria Waste Management Environment Trust, as well as local businesses including Abbott Lodge Ice Cream Farm, A W Jenkinsons, T W Relph & Sons and Lowfield Pheasantries. SITA Trust provides funding through the Landfill Communities Fund. Funding is available for community and environmental groups to carry out a range of improvement projects.
If you would like to learn more about the work of the Cumbria Water Vole Project, visit www.watervole.org. For more information on Eden Rivers Trust, you can visit www.edenriverstrust.org.uk. For more information on Cumbria Wildlife Trust, you can visit www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk .
