{"id":203465,"date":"2026-05-27T13:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T13:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/203465\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T13:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T13:15:13","slug":"rare-burrowing-city-water-voles-relocated-ahead-of-drainage-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/203465\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare burrowing city water voles relocated ahead of drainage works"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlike other voles which generally live beside streams and rivers, the fossorial voles, first discovered in the city in 2008, live in grassy spaces in the urban environment.<\/p>\n

They have adapted to dig like moles and burrow underground in parks and grassy areas around the East End of the city.<\/p>\n

A specialist team of ecologists has now completed work to carefully trap and move the population from the Wellhouse area to a suitable habitat nearby, the location of which is being kept confidential.<\/p>\n

\"\"The voles were caught in special traps before being relocated (Scottish Water\/PA)<\/p>\n

The team used empty Pringle tubes to help catch the voles as they were just the right size to help funnel the creatures while encouraging them into crates.<\/p>\n

The voles were moved in recent weeks ahead of work to construct a new Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SUDS) detention basin in the area.<\/p>\n

Scottish Water\u2019s alliance team manager Steven Greenhill said: \u201cScottish Water takes its role and responsibility to protect the local environment very seriously, which is why we\u2019ve undertaken a very significant amount of work to ensure the protection of these very rare voles.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur thanks to all the partners involved for their knowledge and expertise in both trapping and relocating the voles safely.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are now working hard to deliver this important drainage project for our customers in Wellhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scottish Water said the SUDS project will prevent as much rainwater entering the combined sewer network, reducing the risk of the system becoming overwhelmed during periods of heavy rain.<\/p>\n

It said the scheme will deliver significant cost and carbon saving benefits \u2014 eliminating the need to pump and ultimately treat rainwater before it is returned to the environment.<\/p>\n

Jenny Craig, environmental manager at Scottish Water, said: \u201cThis has been a real team effort spanning several years, and involving collaboration between Scottish Water, Glasgow City Council, NatureScot, the Seven Lochs Wetland Park and our ecologists at Tetra Tech.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great example of all the work that is done in the background to support this essential project while also protecting the wildlife that makes Glasgow\u2019s East End so special.\u201d<\/p>\n

The population of rare voles is said to be of national significance.<\/p>\n

\"Vole\"The team named one vole Paprika after being caught with the help of a Pringles tube (Scottish Water\/PA)<\/p>\n

Julia Ferguson, associate director of ecology at Tetra Tech, said: \u201cGlasgow\u2019s fossorial water voles are truly remarkable \u2014 they\u2019re one of the few known populations in the UK to have adapted to living in urban grasslands away from water.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been carefully trapping and relocating the voles to a suitable nearby habitat, and hope to see this new area act as an important connecting habitat for fragmented water vole colonies in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scottish Water said the SUDS project plays a key part in enabling more social and affordable housing to be developed in the area.<\/p>\n

The project is being delivered by Caledonia Water Alliance (CWA) on behalf of Scottish Water, and work is expected to be complete by summer next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlike other voles which generally live beside streams and rivers, the fossorial voles, first discovered in the city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-203465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}