Evicted water voles go to animal hotel

ENDANGERED WATER voles have been sent to an "animal hotel" while vital restoration work is carried out on the canal bank that has become their home.

In a pioneering project to save Britain's most rapidly disappearing mammal, 12 rodents have been moved 30 miles away to a special enclosure at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, while a section of the Kennet and Avon Canal is renovated.

Water voles - immortalised as Ratty in Kenneth Grahame's children's classic Wind in the Willows - have declined by 90 per cent in recent years and their habitats are now protected by law.

Jonathan Briggs, a conservation ecologist with the canal operator British Waterways, said yesterday: "We have sent them to Slimbridge because they already have voles there. They know how to look after them and it is entirely mink-proof."

Environmentalists at Oxford University's wildlife conservation unit have arranged for the enclosure to contain a channel with a constant flow of water running through it and reeds for the rodents to feed on and burrow behind.

The first voles were sent to Slimbridge in April and more are set to join them next month. They have been fitted with "radio collars" so the conservationists can keep track of their movements. Mr Briggs said there was already evidence of some breeding.

Water voles have been in sharp decline ever since the North American mink established itself in Britain in the Fifties and Sixties after escaping from fur farms. They have increasingly sought refuge in the banks of canals and are now rarely found near rivers.

British Waterways will arrange for the animals to be returned home next year after sections of the Kennet and Avon have been fitted with a new concrete lining. A soil vole bank has been devised with a concrete lip to stop the soil from slipping into the canal and holes to allow the voles to go to and from the water.

British Waterways intends to extend the project if it is successful.