CONSERVATIONISTS are helping to save one of Britain’s rarest creatures by protecting and improving its North-East habitats.

Water voles are critically endangered in many parts of the country but thrive in the area covered by the Durham Wildlife Trust, which is responsible for an area stretching from Gateshead, in the north, to Darlington, in the south.

The region has its own part-time water vole officer Karen McArthur, who is funded by the Environment Agency and co-ordinates projects such as recent fencing on Weardale farmland supported by the County Durham Environmental Trust (CDent) through a CDent Premier award.

Miss McArthur said: “Fencing prevents overgrazing and poaching along the banksides of watercourses, meaning more vegetation for water voles to eat, as well as providing them with cover from predators.

“There are good populations of water voles in parts of Weardale and it is hoped this project will help protect their numbers, as well as allowing them to expand.”

Water voles are protected in Britain, where numbers plummeted by more than 90 per cent after predatory American mink escaped from fur farms, and they lost habitat through changes in farming and flood control practices.

They are also often mistaken for rats and Ratty, from Kenneth Graeme’s The Wind in the Willows, was actually a water vole.

The Sita trust, which uses a national Landfill Communities Fund to improve biodiversity and the environment around landfill sites, already supports habitat work encouraging a colony at the Angel of the North fishing lakes, near Gateshead, to expand and return to the River Team.

Energy company E.on has donated £4,000 for other habitat improvements between the Wildlife Trust’s headquarters at Rainton Meadows, near Houghton-le-Spring, and nearby Hetton-le-Hole, on Wearside.

Trust director Jim Cokill said: “Water voles are critically endangered, but thanks to work being carried out in our area, their populations are doing well.

“Our area is a real stronghold and, with the animal in such dire straits elsewhere in the country, our work gives it a chance to avoid extinction in the UK.”

The trust wants to hear of any water vole sightings in the region.

Call 0191-584-3112.