A water vole release pen on the river bank during the reintroduction project in 2010 The River Colne was the first major watercourse in Essex to have a fully-funded, catchment-wide mink control scheme. In 2009 ahead of water vole re-introductions, 16 mink rafts were installed and a total of nearly 100 mink removed [...]
The Waterlife Recovery Trust is delighted to announce that we have been awarded funding from Natural England's Species Recovery Programme. The new grant of £500,000 will allow us to expand our work outwards from East Anglia to cover an area from the Thames to mid Lincolnshire (see map above). Better still, the Essex Wildlife [...]
A problem with invasive introduced species is that they leave you few choices: you suffer the damage, you control them, or you eradicate them. In most cases these are not exclusive, you might for example do some control but still suffer damage. Without eradication, the cost of damage and control remains year in, year [...]
Mink monitoring stations across the Waterlife Recovery East project area sometimes reveal surprising visitors but none more so than a pine marten that has become a regular visitor to one of our Essex sites since Mid March 2023. Pine martens were once a common native species in the county's woodlands but like polecats were [...]
There is such a thing as a free lunch! Join us for a celebration of the achievements made during the Green Recovery Challenge Funded phase of our campaign to make East Anglia’s waterways a safe place for our native wildlife! We will be having an afternoon learning about the recovery of water voles, otters [...]
Back in July 2021 I was contacted by Matthew Plummer, who was referred to me by a landowner with a smart raft on their land. Matthew told me about a mink that had raided their pond earlier in the year although luckily they managed to trap it. His pond is surrounded by an electric [...]
The Countryman’s Weekly is carrying an article by Nigel Housden, featuring Stephen Mace the Lead Project Office for the Mink Eradication project. Below is a video that Nigel and Stephen made to show the equipment we use, and how to use it. Nigel Housden's website can be viewed here - https://www.pinsharpstudios.com/. Below [...]
Otters are making a very welcome return to the waterways of East Anglia, having been persecuted to near-extinction in our region. They and American mink often occupy the same stretch of river or drain, and otter families are frequent visitors to the mink rafts we deploy, which is why the raft tunnels are fitted [...]
A blur of electric blue is all that we normally see of a kingfisher, and even this is a rare encounter for most of us, but one of these delightful creatures gave Cliff Carson a very pleasant surprise when he downloaded one of the cameras he employs to monitor mink raft activity. The camera [...]
Waterlife Recovery East (WRE) is incredibly pleased to be able to report that we have received three grants from the Anglian Water Invasive Species Fund, each for £14,650. The grants are administered by the Cambridgeshire Community Foundation and received on behalf of WRE by one of our key partners The Norfolk Rivers Trust. The [...]
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