Page 19 - Wildlife News December 2015
P. 19
Back on the Meon
Lyndsey young It’s the UK’s biggest water vole Park Authority, the Environment
reintroduction – and it’s working. Agency, Natural England and
Customers and Wildlife Trust staff appreciate VHF. This summer 190 animals were Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife
released on the River Meon Trust. It has turned around the
Vine House Farm in Hampshire. They join 450 factors which wiped the voles out
donates £1m released at Titchfield Haven in in the Meon Valley: habitat loss,
2013 and 600 further upstream in pollution and predation by
A huge thanks to bird food producer Vine House 2014. Volunteer monitoring shows non-native American mink. The
Farm, whose donations to The Wildlife Trusts have the voles are breeding at all three improvements will benefit the
just passed the £1,000,000 mark. This incredible sites, sometimes more than a mile whole river ecosystem.
sum is the result of a partnership which began upstream. “The voles haven’t been able
in 2007. Since then, the award-winning family The project is
business in Lincolnshire has donated five per cent led by the to return naturally to the
of each bird food sale to each customer’s local South Downs Meon, so they need a little
Wildlife Trust. National extra help,” said the
VHF founder Nicholas Watts has been a pioneer Trust’s Ali Morse.
of wildlife-friendly farming since the 1980s. Thanks
to his generosity we have been able to protect and Have river. Will breed. jamie hall
restore more areas for nature, and to inspire more
people to experience wildlife first-hand. Ted Smith
n More on wildlifetrusts.org/blog/vinehousefarm 1920–2015
Not every Lincolnshire farm has marsh harriers. Ted Smith CBE, founder of
Vine house farm Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and
scottish WT a leading light in the Wildlife Ted was an inspiration sarah pitt
Trusts movement, has died. to generations of
He saw the need to conserve conservationists.
our country’s coast, heaths,
meadows and woodland as
early as the 1940s, and was
widely recognised for his
services to conservation. In
2012 he was presented with The
Wildlife Trusts’ Centenary Award
by Sir David Attenborough.
Scottish beavers produce two kits
Fish such as grayling will See mum and her three month-old kits on Video from the Scottish Beaver Trial
benefit from cleaner, the video. at Knapdale shows two young kits
playing by their mother – a first for
more varied water flows. the project, which aims to bring back
beavers after 400 years. Led by the
Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal
Zoological Society of Scotland, the
trial finished this year. The Scottish
Environment Minister will now decide
whether the beavers can stay.
n Video: youtu.be/gli8pWaOlBI
December 2015 19
