Water Vole Project
Water voles were once common across the whole of the UK but declined due to habitat loss and predation by non-native American mink.
In Cornwall, the water vole became extinct, with its last reported sightings in the 1990s, and did not return until the first reintroductions were made in Bude in 2014.
The water vole is the largest of the UK’s voles, weighing 200-350g as an adult, making them a substantial food source for many native predators, such as barn owls, kestrels, herons and otters.
For water voles, a hard day’s work involves getting out their green fingers to garden the plants around them by grazing on over 227 different species, including rushes, grasses, and berries.
After consuming around 80% of their body weight daily, these ecosystem engineers switch out their gardening gloves for hard hats and dig their burrows into the nearby pond and river banks.
The architecture of these burrows creates a drying effect on the soil and enhances the activity and number of microbes.
Without water voles, wetlands and other water-adjacent areas become less biodiverse habitats with more of the same dominating grass species.
In 2022, with funding from Mossy Earth, we released the first water voles to be seen in south Cornwall in decades at the Trelusback Foundation conservation site near Stithians Lake.
With help from volunteers, we released around a hundred of these once-decimated animals into an area that was carefully monitored for American mink.
After a further top-up at the same site the following year, and with funding from Rewilding Europe and our successful Save our Wild Isles Crowdfunder, we used a second release site in the upper Cober catchment to release another hundred water voles.
Our work is far from done with water voles. Our next step is to scale up our reintroductions at more sites around Cornwall and bring more of these vital members of our ecosystem back to where they belong.
If you would like to help us in supporting our water vole project, you can do so by donating to our water vole appeal or by becoming one of our personal or business memberships.