Bridging the Gap project

Description

Water voles are an IUCN Red List Species, their threat status for the most part, is a result of predation my American mink, an invasive non-native species. The control and eradication of mink through effective regional partnerships t has been identified by Natural England through their Threatened Species Recovery Action (TSRA) project as the priority action to recover the species. This project is looking to shift the dial for recovery of water voles. It aims to fill the missing part of a puzzle to create a mink free corridor from the Thames Estuary in the south-east of England across to the Bristol Chanel on the west coast. This will create a mink free corridor across the country, enabling the recovery of water voles while also enabling the strategic control of mink into the South West of England. Mink eradication across this corridor, and England as a whole, is being led by Waterlife Recovery Trust (WRT). This charity has been in place since 2022, building on the very successful work to remove mink from East Anglia from 2019 onwards. The organisation’s goal and sole purpose is to achieve the eradication of mink across Great Britain, using strict working protocols, strong scientific evidence and building partnerships in the areas that they operate in. WRT is uniquely placed to undertake county-scale mink eradication because it has already demonstrated that landscape-scale eradication is achievable, not just theoretical. Building on the success of Waterlife Recovery East, the Trust is the only organisation that has developed a proven, humane, and systematic trapping model using smart monitoring technology, supported by strong scientific oversight. It combines professional coordination with a large, well-trained volunteer network and works in partnership with landowners, conservation bodies, and local stakeholders. Crucially, it has delivered measurable ecological recovery across large areas and has an operational framework ready to scale, making it far more capable than other organisations starting from scratch. The objectives of the Project are to work in collaboration with Waterlife Recovery Trust to: (a) Establish a broad corridor of water vole friendly habitat from the Bristol Channel to the Thames by means of eradicating invasive American mink (hereafter 'mink'). (b) Establish a suitable project group to oversee the project for its duration (c) Ensure comprehensive smart mink trap coverage (d) Establish professional coordination of the trap network to ensure high standards of Health and Safety, animal welfare and operational efficacy.