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9 May 2006
Water voles thrive in the Fens
Surveys bring good news for their future in Cambridgeshire
The extensive network of drainage ditches in the Fens are a national stronghold for water voles. This good news has been confirmed by the completion of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Water Vole Project, and other surveys undertaken by the Wildlife Trust, in two areas between March and Chatteris.
The water vole - “Ratty” from Wind in the Willows - has disappeared from large areas of Britain, having once been found along almost every river and stream. The causes of this decline are predation by mink and more intensive land management. However, in the Fens they continue to survive over widespread areas and in some places are thriving. The Wildlife Trust looked in detail at two areas, Ransonmoor and Curf Fen, between March and Chatteris. Here, water voles are present on 90% of Internal Drainage Board (IDB) maintained ditches at Ransonmoor and 63% of IDB maintained ditches at Curf Fen. Elsewhere, good populations have been found on smaller watercourses around Peterborough and Whittlesey and east of Ely towards the Norfolk and Suffolk border. Several colonies also still survive in and around Cambridge.
The recent work of the Trust in partnership with the Middle Level Commissioners and IDBs has helped develop a revised protocol for management of fenland drainage ditches. The key to the conservation of water voles in the Fens would appear to be adopting these ditch management recommendations as standard practice over a much larger area. However, nationally, the Wildlife Trusts believe that there is an urgent need to review the direction of the national water vole conservation strategy. At present resources are targeted to a few large, coastal nature reserves at the expense of areas of the wider countryside and urban areas, where water voles appear to be able to survive and hold their own, in spite of past habitat degradation and predation by mink.