{"id":504782,"date":"2026-03-31T07:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/504782\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T07:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:30:08","slug":"stoat-cull-credited-with-rise-in-orkney-vole-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/504782\/","title":{"rendered":"Stoat cull credited with rise in Orkney vole activity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The stoat eradication is being carried out by the Orkney Native Wildlife Project &#8211; a partnership between RSPB Scotland, NatureScot and Orkney Islands Council.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Stoats, which are native to mainland Britain but not to Orkney, were first found on the islands in 2010. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Conservationists have warned that stoats could devastate populations of wildlife including the Orkney voles, which are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-23942934\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">unique to the islands.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Individual stoat food stores containing about 100 Orkney voles have been discovered on the islands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Since 2019 more than 8,500 stoats have been removed using humane lethal traps and Europe&#8217;s first stoat detection dogs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The new monitoring report surveyed Orkney voles by looking for signs such as droppings and grass clippings. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Across 22 sites surveyed on the mainland and the islands, signs of voles were found in a third of the 1,082 small survey squares searched.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Monitoring also found autumn activity by the voles was high. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The stoat eradication is being carried out by the Orkney Native Wildlife Project &#8211; a partnership between RSPB&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-504782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504782","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=504782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}