Day 3 - Trossachs - Mink Raft/Water Voles

Myself, Andy MacIntosh & Victoria McAllister spent the day checking Mink Rafts while driving around the forest in a Land Rover while wearing waders & surveying for Water Voles in the forests around Aberfoyle. We started with a coffee on a cold morning with an educational talk from Emily Marshall who runs the local Trossachs Water Vole Project. The Water Vole is difficult to find but you can find traces such as small round holes at the entrance to underground tunnel networks, signs of eating and the occasional small poo ! There are many small colonies of Water Voles in The Great Trossachs Forest after reintroduction in 2008 after they went extinct in the area in the 80’s. Protection is by monitoring the current population with regular surveys and controlling their predators like American mink in the nearby area by use of floating clay pads to observe foot prints. The American Mink is a non-native species that were wrongly released after closure of a nearby mink farm. Since then, these aggressive predators have devastated populations of Water Voles and other small animals.