Conservation Status: Declining. Priority Species on the National Biodiversity Action Plan.
Hertfordshire: In 1998 the water vole was added to Schedule 5 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act (1981), to ensure consideration of the species before their habitat is destroyed.
Protection: No legal protection.
General Information: Water voles mainly use slow-moving rivers and ditches. They prefer densely vegetated waterways, constructing their burrows in the riverside banks. Their diet consists of reeds, sedges, coarse grasses and aquatic plants; often leaving neat piles of chewed plants by their burrow or at the water’s edge. Water voles are territorial and mark their territories with droppings at latrine sites along the water’s edge. The number of latrine sites can be used as an indication of the population.
Threats: The decline is thought to be due to a combination of factors. These include destruction/ re-profiling of the river bank, removal of vegetation making water voles more vulnerable to predation, a decline in water quality (particularly due to run-off from fields where arable crops are grown close to the river), loss of water from the rivers and predation notably by the introduced American Mink. Most importantly increased isolation causes local extinction.
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