We hope to be able to help landowners and local authorities to protect these rare animals by improving the banks of streams and preventing too much interference with the water voles’ habitat and food plants. Taking the existence of water voles into account when planning watercourse maintenance may improve the habitat considerably.

Water voles are protected by law. The number of places in England where water voles have been recorded has dropped by about 95% over the last fifteen years. This has been caused by both predation by mink and by habitat removal.

The Whitchurch area still has a significant water vole population. We aim to find out where the voles are, even though we cannot count them precisely, and to improve the habitat where possible, enabling the scattered population to link up along watercourses and so maintain genetic diversity.