Bring Back the Voles!
There used to be a thriving population of water-voles on the Wellow Brook, but between the mink and changes in farming practice, they’ve been gone from our beautiful valley for some decades now. But there is an opportunity to bring them back.
The Wellow Brook Fly Fishers Syndicate, of which I’m a member, has finally received some compensation money from the pollution incident when an upstream farmer’s slurry tank collapsed and thousands of gallons of raw cow muck ran down the river. This devastated the brook, killing many of its aquatic inhabitants and threatening the survival of our club.
We intend to spend the money improving the ecology and amenity of the river over the next few years. You may have seen that we’ve started work on the section upstream of Stony Littleton Bridge to allow a bit more light into the river, and promote an uneven age profile of bank-side trees and vegetation which is good for wildlife. We have been doing monthly Riverfly invertebrate surveys to monitor the health of the brook and can report that it is recovering well.
One of the things we think it would be wonderful to achieve, with the support of both Shoscombe and Wellow villages, is to reintroduce the water-voles that should be there. We’ve consulted Derek Gow, the national water-vole expert, and he’s assessed the river and given us a plan of action. It’s quite a bit of work and may take a year or two, but if we can get a little help, we believe it can be done.
What we would like to do, is to form a small water-vole group to make this happen. If you would like to help, or to know more about the project, would you please email me: click on my email address: rod@burnthousefarm.co.uk
Rod Humphris
Click on further links below for further information:
www.watervoles.com
www.wellowbrookflyfishers.co.uk/habitat-works/
There used to be a thriving population of water-voles on the Wellow Brook, but between the mink and changes in farming practice, they’ve been gone from our beautiful valley for some decades now. But there is an opportunity to bring them back.
The Wellow Brook Fly Fishers Syndicate, of which I’m a member, has finally received some compensation money from the pollution incident when an upstream farmer’s slurry tank collapsed and thousands of gallons of raw cow muck ran down the river. This devastated the brook, killing many of its aquatic inhabitants and threatening the survival of our club.
We intend to spend the money improving the ecology and amenity of the river over the next few years. You may have seen that we’ve started work on the section upstream of Stony Littleton Bridge to allow a bit more light into the river, and promote an uneven age profile of bank-side trees and vegetation which is good for wildlife. We have been doing monthly Riverfly invertebrate surveys to monitor the health of the brook and can report that it is recovering well.
One of the things we think it would be wonderful to achieve, with the support of both Shoscombe and Wellow villages, is to reintroduce the water-voles that should be there. We’ve consulted Derek Gow, the national water-vole expert, and he’s assessed the river and given us a plan of action. It’s quite a bit of work and may take a year or two, but if we can get a little help, we believe it can be done.
What we would like to do, is to form a small water-vole group to make this happen. If you would like to help, or to know more about the project, would you please email me: click on my email address: rod@burnthousefarm.co.uk
Rod Humphris
Click on further links below for further information:
www.watervoles.com
www.wellowbrookflyfishers.co.uk/habitat-works/