I got this great photo today from Katy Freeman who works for Forestry Commission Scotland in Cowal & Trossachs Forest District. We did some water vole survey work for Katy last autumn down by Lochgoilhead. She is managing a water vole release programme within the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park, using water voles rescued from a development site in Glasgow. There was a danger that the genetic base of the introduced population might get too narrow, so we arranged for her to capture some immature water voles in Glen Lochay, at a site that we found in 2007, and these will be used to breed with her captive voles to give her a wider genetic base.
We will use this photo in pole position in the water vole section of our final report. This water vole is light coloured. The Scottish population has a high proportion of black animals but many are also the brown variety and some are a grey, brown , blackish in-between colour.
Well done Katy.
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