{"id":151668,"date":"2025-09-21T18:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T18:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/151668\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T18:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T18:42:10","slug":"water-voles-reintroduced-to-river-lea-after-20-years-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/151668\/","title":{"rendered":"Water voles reintroduced to River Lea after 20 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The water vole is one of the  UK&#8217;s fastest-declining mammals. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nationally, since the 1960s, its population has fallen by 90% due to habitat loss and predation by invasive American mink, the trust added. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Ayot Estate and the angling club worked with the trust to prepare the site, and created a &#8220;welcoming environment for this important native species&#8221;, it added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr Kalms said: &#8220;Water voles eat a huge range of plants species and in doing so, they move seeds around, helping to maintain varied plant cover and creating lush and wild bankside vegetation. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They are also a key food source for native species like stoats, predatory fish, herons and birds of prey.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The water voles, bred by the Derek Gow Consultancy in Devon, were released into temporary riverside pens to acclimatise before establishing their own burrows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The water vole is one of the UK&#8217;s fastest-declining mammals. Nationally, since the 1960s, its population has fallen&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-151668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}