Comeback for water voles

WATER voles are to be reintroduced to the wild on a stretch of river where they have been extinct for three decades.

Some 150 of the mammals (pictured) are being released. Populations of water voles – immortalised as the character Ratty in Wind In The Willows – have plummeted in the past few decades, killed by invasive American mink which escaped from fur farms. A loss of suitable riverbank habitats has also led to a vast drop in numbers.

The mammals are being released on the River Aller in the National Trust’s Holnicote Estate on Exmoor in Somerset, where they were last seen in the 1980s.

Their return is part of the charity’s £10million Riverlands project to restore five rivers in England and Wales. It is hoped introducing voles will boost the wildlife along the waterways.

Mink are thought to have wiped out the voles, but then died out themselves when the voles – their main food supply – ran out.