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Conservationists are trialling a genius new method to try and revive a creature that’s rapidly declining in the UK. The number of water voles in the UK has reduced by 90% in the past 30 years according to conservationists, and a new glitter-based approach is at the forefront of a breakthrough.
A conservation team will douse food in edible glitter with the hopes their shiny droppings can be tracked, intel they believe could help them create life-saving measures. Rob Parry, chief executive at Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru (INCC), explained that many factors, including new predators, have combined to create the “perfect storm” for their decline.
He told the BBC: “It’s been a perfect storm of bad things that’s happened to water voles in the last few decades.
“We have drained an awful lot of their wetland habitat, forced them into linear ditches where we find them now, and then the biggest problem is the American mink, an invasive species that was let out and released from pens and they just turned out to be the perfect water vole predators. The water voles don’t stand a chance, really.”
Conservationists will first trial the method on some captive-bred water voles that are part of a wider Natural Resources Wales (NRW) project to reintroduce colonies into the wild.
They will put glitter on apples, which voles don’t naturally eat in the wild but have enjoyed in captivity, according to Richard Davies from NRW.
Parry said his team had consulted with vets to ensure the glitter, which is normally found on cakes instead of the countryside floor, will be harmless to the tiny creatures.
If the trial is put to use in the wild, conservationists could use the insights to make adjustments for the voles, such as fencing off riverbanks to stop sheep grazing or removing conifers from wetland habitats.
They hope this will allow the water voles to spread across the countryside and potentially revive the species.
