{"id":665646,"date":"2026-06-30T07:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T07:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/665646\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T07:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T07:17:10","slug":"searching-hampshire-river-for-britains-fastest-declining-mammal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/665646\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching Hampshire river for Britain&#8217;s fastest-declining mammal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As the volunteers make their way down stream, gently parting the riverside vegetation looking for signs of water voles, frequent finds are shouted back to Reeves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The constant updates of today&#8217;s chart perhaps masks the spectacular decline of what was once a constant along our waterways.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is estimated the spread of non native American mink saw 90% of water voles wiped out since the 1970s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Together with the loss of habitat it now has the unenviable title of the fastest declining mammal in Britain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But on the River Meon the future of the water vole is looking a little brighter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">More than 2,800 water voles have been released as part of the Meon Valley Partnership since 2013.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The joint project between the South Downs National Park Authority, conservation groups and landowners appears to have halted and reversed the dramatic decline.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Regular surveys have shown they are breeding and thriving with no sign of American mink along the waterway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the volunteers make their way down stream, gently parting the riverside vegetation looking for signs of water&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-665646","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\/665646","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=665646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}