Ratty is back after 30-year hiatus

WATER voles are to return to a stretch of river on Exmoor where they have not been seen for more than 30 years.

The mammal, immortalised in the character of Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, is being released on the Aller which flows through the National Trust’s Holnicote Estate. Its return there is part of a £10million Riverlands project to restore five rivers in Wales and England.

Water voles numbers have plummeted in the UK in the past few decades due to loss of habitat and the invasion of the American mink which escaped or were set free from fur farms. Mink also died out at Holnicote after they had exhausted the available prey of water voles.

About 150 water voles have been bred and are being released in groups of siblings and breeding pairs along the river, from where it is hoped they will spread to streams and other rivers. Samantha Herbert