The Thames to Lincolnshire (TtL) project commenced in August 2023, when WRT were awarded a £500,000 grant by Natural England. The areas included in the grant ran from the Thames in the south to mid-Lincolnshire. With additional match funding from partnering trusts, the TtL project was able to extend to include South London, Essex and northern Lincolnshire (Figure 1). The project has two main goals, first to extend our trapping area thereby increasing the area in which water vole are protected and secondly, to protect the core area, from mink re-invasion. The funding allowed us to hire staff and purchase nearly 400 more traps to extend the trapping area.

The first step to kick off the project, was to hire staff to install and manage the traps. Within the first few weeks, a Project Manager and five Project Officers were brought on board. As of July 2024, this has increased to 7 Project Officers. The addition of two more Project Officers was possible due to funding by partnering organisations.

The second step was to put out traps into these new areas. At the start of the TtL project there were 168 active traps in project area (Table 1), primarily managed by partnering groups. As of 31st of July 2024, we have increased this to 793 active traps (Table 1). Taking the blue and red areas indicated in Figure 1 together, the total number of active traps at the end of July 2024 was just over 1400.

Figure 1: Map showing WRT project areas. The already heavily trapped area is indicated in Red. The new Thames to Lincolnshire project area is indicated in Blue.