The hard facts of decline reggarding the British water vole are that since 2011, the population of the British water vole has reduced by one fifth. However, and what’s more, since 1970 there has been a staggering 90% decline of water voles on our riverbanks.
Alastair Driver, National Conservation Manager from the Environment Agency, said: "This creature is part of our waterway systems. People love walking along a canal and hearing the plop of a water vole into the canal. They are part of the food chain... part of the ecosystem.
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs published a report:
Biodiversity 2020: A strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services
Outlined the Government vision of an integrated approach to conserve biodiversity. It quotes a Making Space for Nature Review and describes its ambitions as: bigger, better, more and joined.
It recognises the fact and quotes “we will enhance ecological connections between, or join up, existing areas of priority habitat, increasing opportunity for wildlife to move around the landscape by making use of ‘stepping stone’, ‘corridors’ and other features.
I call upon Govenment to realease funds to allow Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire Wild Life Trust to purchase land at the heart of the Great Fen. Not only could they transform this major new piece of land into a nature-rich haven, but crucially, join up a number of separate areas they are already restoring to become one huge swathe of habitat where wildlife can spread and flourish and our little water voles would flourish
The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded us £1.89 million towards this but they must urgently need to find £182,000 of match funding to release this generous grant.
