Water Voles Re-introduction.

[Kymba]

March 2007. Watermeads Island, a historic wetland near Mitcham, has been chosen by London Wildlife Trust, The National Trust and the Environment Agency to reintroduce water voles to the river Wandle and to aid the future survival of this endangered species. A partnership of organisations, led by London Wildlife Trust’s London Water Vole Project, is aiming to bring back the water vole to the Wandle by spring 2009 through a reintroduction programme.
Over 900 metres of ditches have recently been skilfully excavated by mechanical digger in order to create good quality habitat for water voles in the future.
The new ditches have been designed to be water vole friendly and also benefit a wide range of other plants and animals such as yellow flag iris and dragonflies. The restored ditches will retain open water, which voles need to help escape predators, and to encourage a diverse of wetland plants to flourish which water voles need for food and shelter, and with steep earth banks for digging homes burrows.

[Fourwings]

That sounds an excellent project Kymba.

I'm all in favour of anything that helps these fantastic little mammals become a more widely established species again.

[Olly]

That sounds like a great project.

The Surrey WT are doing something very similar near me, at the Brookwood Lye site.

I hope they are both a success.

Olly

[aeshna5]

The London area has some good Water Vole sites with the River Crane to the west, introduced at the London Wetland Centre + in the east Rainham Marshes RSPB Reserve is supposed to have the greatest concentration in the country.

Good luck to this new scheme- Ratty needs all the help he can get!

[BeowulfIII]

aeshna, how are they doing at LWC? Are they prolific rodent-like breeders?

[rlchew]

I was fortunate to see a Water Vole for the first time at my local patch (Wat Tyler CP in Essex) this week .

As we know, Water Voles have become increasingly scarce due to a variety of reasons so it is good to hear about the Watermeads Island project. Let's hope it is successful!

Water Voles to be reintroduced to Wandle

Richard

[mrs fish]

Great news

[Chiltern Chris]

A bit of info. about a couple of the sites mentioned above. The River Crane improvements were specifically designed for water voles and included the reedbed at Crane Park Island, removal of toe boarding along the river (put in by the GLC in the 1970s) and weir removal. There are plans to do some more work on the Crane this year to try and help extend their range. One problem is that where the vole populations are expanding they dig tunnels behind the toe boarding, which legally makes it harder to take the toe boards off, even though in the long term they'll be much better off without them.

There are at least 4 other London rivers that will be investigated for naturalisation of some areas this year but the funding isn't confirmed for those yet so I can't say any more about those. There is also a small glimmer of hope regarding the removal of the Wandle barrage, which would be a large improvement, but that may be a few years away yet. Also the Environment Agency is writing a river restoration strategy for London. This will combine the present North and South London strategies and link into the London Plan which will guide the London planners over the next decade on how to improve London's rivers as London develops.

The RSPB reserve at Rainham is interesting because it's a birds v voles scenario. There are 3 marshes on the site. Rainham marsh (the one near the train station) which is largely unmanaged has the best water vole populations, while the more heavily grazed marshes, grazed for waders (Wennington and Aveley marsh) have seen water vole populations decline. The marshes themselves are nationally important for their invertebrate populations too and water management for waders can / has compromised these species as well. I know birds are visible and have lots of supporters (including me) but on some sites conservation management for one group can have significant effects on others and even respected conservation organisations need to be careful that they don't target one group of species to the detriment of something more important.

[Kymba]

Cheers for that Chiltern Chris. I am not far from Rainham, so may take a trip there in the near future

But need to get myself a proper camera first

[aeshna5]

Originally Posted by BeowulfIII

aeshna, how are they doing at LWC? Are they prolific rodent-like breeders?

I think they are holding their own, but the population isn't romping away- plenty of predators such as Herons + Foxes to look out for!