AN ambitious five-year project to reintroduce water voles to Kielder has been given the green light thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Northumberland Wildlife Trust announced on Wednesday that its bid for funding had been successful and that the scheme could now get under way.

Aided by the £421,000 HLF money, the ‘Restoring Ratty’ initiative will aim to establish a sustainable population of water voles within Kielder Water and Forest Park on the upper catchment tributaries of the Kielder Burn and North Tyne, above Kielder Reservoir.

A team of volunteers and conservationists will carry out a programme of captive breeding and reintroduction of voles to areas with suitable wetland habitat where there is an absence of its main enemy, American mink.

The water vole, brought to life as ‘Ratty’ in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows , has been declining in the UK for many years due to predation from mink.

‘Ratty’ is now largely absent from the region although strong populations remain in the North Pennines.

The project will start later this month with the recruitment of a project officer and surveys in the North Pennines from which water voles may be taken to establish a captive breeding population to begin reintroduction.

In five years’ time, the team hopes there will be well established water vole colonies at Kielder.

Graham Holyoak, project manager for Tyne Rivers Trust which successfully led the first phase of the project to establish a predator free environment for the water voles said: “Volunteers gathered over 1,000 records with no sighting of mink, which is the water vole’s main predator, so we are confident that the habitat is now ready for the re-introduction of water voles to begin.”

Project partners, the Forestry Commission, Tyne Rivers Trust and Northumberland Wildlife Trust, are committed to working together over the next five years to make this project a success, supporting the soon to be appointed project officer based at Kielder Castle.

Northumberland Wildlife Trust’s development manager Nick Mason said: “We are delighted that the hard work of everybody who worked to create this wonderful project has paid off and ‘Ratty’ can now, thanks to support from National Lottery players, make a triumphant return to our riverbanks where it rightfully belongs.”