HUNDREDS more water voles have been released around Kielder to join those already reintroduced in June.

Following the successful introduction of more than 300 voles after a 30-year absence, the Kielder Water Vole Partnership has set free an additional 255 into two further secret sites in the vast 650 square kilometre area.

This latest release is part of Restoring Ratty, a partnership project delivered by the Northumberland Wildlife Trust, the Forestry Commission and Tyne Rivers Trust, aimed at bringing back the much-loved British species – known as ‘Ratty’ in Kenneth Grahame’s children’s classic Wind in the Willows – to our waterways.

The new arrivals have been bred from a population captured in the North Pennines during September 2016.

They then spent the winter at the Derek Gow Consultancy in Devon (specialists in water vole conservancy) where they were bred to provide large numbers of young for release.

The ‘Pennine’ voles will hopefully make friends with the ‘McRattys’, the June contingent that were bred from a batch taken from the Trossachs.

This latest release will boost the water vole population and hopefully increase their genetic diversity.

The programme has been paid for thanks to money raised from national lottery players through a grant of £421,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Kelly Hollings, a Restoring Ratty project officer, said that surveying of the June release voles will begin on Monday, but volunteers have already reported print and droppings sightings, so they are obviously surviving.

The aim is to restore populations of this endangered mammal to the Kielder catchment of the North Tyne, with a view to their eventual spread throughout the western reaches of Northumberland.

The Kielder Water Vole Partnership has also released the last of three films, titled Restoring Ratty: The Journey, by film maker Alan Fentiman.

The film charts the project from the capture of 16 water voles in the North Pennines last September, their transportation to the captive breeding centre in Devon, to their return to the region with their young offspring ready for their release in June.

The film, a must-see for wildlife lovers, can be viewed on the project’s Restoring Ratty Facebook page or at Kielder Castle and Tower Knowe Visitor Centre, Kielder.