Water vole restoration project brings home BIAZA Great British Wildlife Restoration Award

A leading British conservation charity, the Wildwood Trust, is celebrating after winning a major national award for its role in helping bring water voles back to Britain’s rivers.

Wildwood Trust, which runs wildlife parks in Kent and Devon, has won the Great British Wildlife Restoration Award, run by BIAZA,  in recognition of its Water Vole Reintroduction Project. 

The award was presented last Tuesday (20 January) by Minister Baroness Hayman of Ullock, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Animal Welfare, at a special ceremony held at Speaker’s House. The event included speeches from Judith Cummings MP (Deputy Speaker), and the Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Victoria Atkins MP. Accepting the award on behalf of Wildwood, Tyrone Capel, Conservation Officer and project lead, said:

“I'm ecstatic for Wildwood to win the award as voted for by MPs, Lords and Ministers. It celebrates over 20 years of water vole conservation here at Wildwood trust. The award provides a spotlight on water voles and their conservation needs to be heard and recognised by parliament.”

The Great British Wildlife Restoration Award attracted strong competition, with 25 other native species projects shortlisted, highlighting the scale and ambition of conservation work taking place across Great Britain. Runners-up include the Ocean Conservation Trust for their Blue Meadows project restoring seagrass, and Folly Farm for Hafod yr Adar - a multi-species bird nesting tower. 

Dr Jo Judge, CEO of BIAZA, said:

“This has been our biggest-ever Great British Wildlife Restoration Award, with more than one hundred parliamentarians taking part. Wildwood’s water vole reintroductions are a brilliantly deserving winner and a powerful example of how conservation can deliver real results.”

Water voles - made famous as Ratty in The Wind in the Willows - are one of the UK’s fastest-declining species, having disappeared from 94% of their former range due to habitat loss, pollution and predation by invasive species.

In July last year, Wildwood played a key role in the historic return of water voles to Surrey, where the species had been absent for decades. As one of the UK’s leading conservation breeding centres, the charity bred around 50 water voles, which were released into the Upper Hogsmill River and the newly restored Chamber Meads wetland in Epsom & Ewell.

Delivered in partnership with the South East Rivers Trust and rewilding organisation Citizen Zoo, the project followed years of work to restore the river and create the healthy wetland habitat water voles need to thrive. Their return marks a major milestone for local biodiversity and one of the most positive rewilding stories in southern England.

Paul Whitfield is Director General of Wildwood Trust:

“Winning this award is absolutely fantastic, as it is a real endorsement of the work Wildwood has been doing for the past two decades. This project involved the release of 50 water voles, and within that same breeding programme we also reached a major milestone - releasing our 2,000th captive-bred water vole back into the wild.

“We have an outstanding conservation team delivering these projects, and our work goes far beyond water voles. It includes red squirrels, pine martens, beavers and many more species. At present, we are running 12 active native species reintroduction projects, and we are aiming to increase that number to nearly 20 by the end of the year.”

Find out more about wildwood’s work - ‘Water vole breeding, reintroduction and mitigation’ here