£50,000 for water voles

THE Berks Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) have launched an urgent appeal for £50,000 to help save the water vole together with yellowhammers and red helleborines, a rare woodland orchid.

The Trust believes that water vole numbers are in freefall on the Wendover Arm of the Grand Union Canal, because of habitat loss and being hunted by the predatory American mink, Alan Tilbury tells us.

Declining

It states that the water vole is currently Britain's fastest declining mammal with numbers dropping by nearly 90 percent in the last 20 years.

The BBOWT's conservation work is helping water vole populations recover locally but it reports that more work must be done so the vole can thrive and stay safe for the future, and to this end it is attempting to raise £50,000 to look after the species and habitats in which they live, with the campaign currently standing at £24,740.54.

The BBOWT initiated a programme of mink monitoring and control on the canal in conjunction with the Canal and River Trust in the hope that Voles would return.

But alas the 'environmentalists' had released mink in the area, that are thriving...