Water Vole monitoring

A small number of water vole platforms have been placed on likely water courses on project farmland. These wooden rafts work on the basis that Water Voles often choose prominent territory marking sites by leaving their droppings on floating objects in the watercourse.  By checking these miniature rafts regularly we hope to find clues to which ditches are currently being used bythe voles. 

"The platforms were inspired by similar rafts used at the Ouse Washes Reserve in Cambridgeshire,"said Tim Burkinshaw, Wetland Project Officer. "If successful we will use them more systematically across the farmland ditch network to pick up the water vole hotspots." This will inform landowners and watercourse managers to better focus ditch management and water level control to benefit the voles as well as other wildlife.