Note:
the following urgent message was sent by Arvy on 22 October 2002. Since
then Arvy has died...Hello, my name is Arvicola Terrestris, but you can call me RV or Arvy.
I am a water vole. I am NOT a rat! I am NOT vermin!
I don't steal your human food like rats do. I don't even like it. I eat all kinds of waterside plants.
I want to live. But it's getting hard. They say that I am going to die soon. Me and my whole species in Great Britain. They say that we will be extinct by the end of 2003.
HELP !!! HELP !!!
Look at me. Look well, because soon there won't by any more like me... unless good people do something to protect me and my kind. Don't you think I'm a cute furry rodent? Don't you think that I should be allowed to live?
My species is being pushed toward extinction by people who mistake us for ... ugh! ... rats. We are often mistaken for vermin and killed by Homo Insipiens, ignorant homeowners, developers, and pest control workers. And by Mustela Vison, the horrible, blood-thirsty American minks, descendants of fugitives from fur farms.
Perhaps worst of all is that developers have stolen 90% of our riverbank habitat during the last 60 years.
Please again look at me well. So you will never call me a water rat. Rats have large ugly ears, but I have small hidden ears. Rats have dull gray-brown fur; I have beautiful silky brown fur. Rats are nosy with their pointed noses; but I have a decently blunt nose. Rats have a disgusting long scaly tail; but I have an elegant furry tail.
We water voles are cute small burrowing rodents. We live near water. That way we can swim away when a predator is after us. Though small, we are by far the largest voles in the UK. For example, I am 18 cm in body length, which is about average for adults, some may be up to 4 cm longer or shorter than me. I weigh 250 grams, right in the middle of the 200 to 300 grams normal range. Most water voles are like me of a uniform dark-brown in colour with a paler underside, though there are a few black water voles (unlike humans we don't discriminate on the basis of colour).
We begin to breed in early spring, later in the hills and in the far north of Scotland. We build nests of grass or rushes either in burrows or, sometimes in safer places, above ground in dense vegetation. Mother voles have four or so babies at a time, and may rear several litters each year. Some are able to breed in their first year although most start to breed the following year.
The mortality rate of the young is horrendous. By winter some 70% will have died of disease or malnutrition, or, more likely, been eaten by cruel carnivores or murdered by misguided humans.
Those of us that do survive spend most of the time in nest-chambers of grass deep in our burrows, but only a very few, like me, live through more than two winters.
As our name suggests, we water voles normally live beside ponds, canals, ditches, and slow-running streams. We do not have webbed feet but we are expert swimmers and frequently move to our feeding places, look for mates, or escape from predators by taking to the water.
We like to dig our burrows in steep banks close to the water's edge, each one of us having a territory up to 200 metres long marked out by flattened latrine areas. We eat a huge range of waterside plants, sometimes from well-used feeding platforms or ‘lawns’ near the water, which may be recognised by the flattened vegetation, short cut lengths of grass and oval droppings scattered around.
We water voles have lived throughout the UK except for most of the islands. The north and west have the lowest density of voles with the greatest populations in the south- east. Population density could reach up to 100 voles per kilometre of bank. But we have become extinct already in many areas of the UK starting in the 1970s.
READ the 14 Oct 2002 PRESS RELEASE from our friends at THE WILDLIFE TRUSTS
If you live in the UK FIND YOUR LOCAL WILDLIFE TRUST and look for the WATER VOLE PROJECT
