Are mink a problem on Deeside?
Yup.
They are the main reason why water voles have been pushed out of the low ground and are now just hanging on in a few patches high up in the hills. There are mink rafts all the way up the Tarland and Logie burns now with the objective of culling mink down to the levels where the water voles are able to re-colonise their lost habitat.
The water vole project team are keen to extend the network of monitoring rafts. I spotted one on the Cowie water last week.I am sure the project team would be happy if more people volunteered to help in their new areas.
Here is the link
http://www.watervolescotland.org/The raft has a pad of wet clay and one of a team of volunteers checks the footprints left on the pad every week. If mink footprints are spotted, the pad comes out and a live cage trap goes in. Anything caught that is not a mink is released unharmed. That way the trapping effort is focussed on where mink are known to be present at the time.
Quite a few mink have been caught on the Tarland and Logie burns in the past couple of years. Now we are waiting to see if the water voles will come back.
Irvine
