Water Vole Survey Community Event for the Upper Beult Project – River Medway

Water Vole Survey Community Event for the Upper Beult Project – River Medway

What are we doing?

Come and join us in Shadoxhurst, Kent, to learn about our Upper Beult wetland creation project and help us survey for Water Voles. These large voles, which are only found along grassy banks of suitable watercourses, were once widespread across much of the UK and Moat Farm is still home to them.

We will head out across the picturesque site and look for water voles, burrows, latrines and feeding signs to better understand their presence and distribution.

Meeting point: Moat Farm, Shadoxhurst, Kent TN26 1LY.  Google map HERE, What3Words: ///hedgehog.chosen.motorist

Parking available on site

What to bring:

  • Comfortable, sturdy shoes. Hiking boots or wellies are both suitable.
  • Weather appropriate clothing. Please bring a waterproof coat and extra layer if it’s chilly or a hat and suncream if it’s likely to be hot.
  • A bottle of water and a reusable coffee cup. We will have water, refreshments and cups available but you may want to bring your own as well.
  • A packed lunch.
  • Outdoor or gardening gloves if you have, if not we will have some spare.

Plan for the day: 

10:00 – Meet, look out for the SERT flag!

10:15 – Introduction to SERT, H&S and overview of the day. Tea and coffees will be available.

10:45 – Get kitted up and head down to the river to start the water vole survey.

12:15 – Lunch.

13:00 – Continuation of water vole survey.

14:00 – Finish

BOOKING ESSENTIAL – please RSVP using the button below and complete the form to secure your spot.

Booking for this event will close at 5pm on Wednesday 2nd October.

Please email volunteering@staging.southeastriverstrust.org to:

  • Find out more information,
  • Cancel your space if you can no longer make it.

To read our Health and Safety Guidelines for this event please click HERE.

Photos and video footage will be taken at this event and used by the Trust for promotional purposes (including but not limited to printed materials, social media, newsletters and the website) and potentially shared with our external partners and funders. From time to time, external media agencies could also take photos, film or record our events.

The Trust’s lawful basis for processing this is “Legitimate Interests” under the General Data Protection Regulations. As an individual you have rights. If you wish for SERT to stop processing this data for you, please talk to a member of staff or email info@staging.southeastriverstrust.org.

To read our Privacy Policy and see how we use and look after the information you provide when booking your spot at our events please click HERE.

What’s in a river? We’re using eDNA to find out

Dr Lewis Campbell, one of our Catchment Managers, reports how we have introduced a modern method of assessing what’s in rivers to our armoury.

Traditionally, a variety of methods have been used to evaluate biodiversity and to understand whether or not a specific species is in a particular place in the countryside. When it comes to fish, for example, these survey methods might involve the use of nets or electrofishing equipment. For mammals, methods can involve field surveys looking for footprints, droppings, burrows and dens, or installing hidden cameras that are automatically triggered with movement. When studying birds, ecologists might spend time in the field searching for visual signs or identifying different species by their calls.

Trout
Our work seeks to help trout recolonise the Hogsmill. Picture via Canva

For smaller creatures, such as amphibians, reptiles and even invertebrates, various types of traps can be deployed so that the animals can be collected and counted before being released again.

One thing that this diverse set of methods all have in common is that they require a large amount of time to be spent on site. More recently, conservationists have begun to use environmental DNA, or eDNA for short, as a tool to understand species distribution. As animals go about their daily lives, they are continually shedding cells into their environment. These cells might come from their hair, skin, saliva, or even their waste, but they all contain the genetic material (DNA) belonging to that animal within their nucleus. This is environmental DNA.

Rivers could be compared to a soup containing cells and DNA from all of the organisms that live in or near by the water.

Simply by collecting a water sample, we can gain a snapshot of all the animals that were in the local vicinity at the time. We pass river water through an extremely fine grade filter, then generate and analyse the genetic sequences that the sample contains. A single water filter sample can reveal the presence of hundreds of different species from right across the animal kingdom.

eDNA is quite a modern technique. The first example to detect species in a freshwater environment was in 2008, when French researchers used the technology to detect invasive American bullfrog. Since then, technology and its potential applications have improved and expanded rapidly.

Preparing to take a sample
Preparing to take a sample to find out the DNA of the Hogsmill

The analysis portion of this work requires numerous pieces of cutting edge technology and very powerful computers, but collecting a water filter sample is very straightforward and quick. This means that it is possible to comprehensively survey the biodiversity at a location much more efficiently than is possible using many traditional methods.

The only major drawback of eDNA surveys is that they can currently only provide information on whether a species was or was not in a given location  but not how many were there. For example, using eDNA you could say “I did detect salmon in my river” but not “there were 50 salmon in my river”.

This means that it is a particularly powerful first pass tool for determining presence or absence of a species, which would then by followed up with more targeted traditional surveys. Therefore, eDNA will never replace the valuable work of professional ecologists, but is certainly a very important emerging tool in the conservationist’s arsenal.

At the South East Rivers Trust we are beginning to use eDNA to understand the biodiversity in our rivers before, during, and after our restoration work. This is critical to developing an understanding of whether or not the projects that we undertake are having the desired positive outcomes for the wildlife that call our rivers home.

An important example of this type of baselining is our WET Hogsmill. This is funded by Natural England and aims to kick start the recovery of several species of concern in the River Hogsmill in South West London.

These species – water vole, European eel, and brown and sea trout – are imperiled across our river network, but all of them historically called the Hogsmill home.

Water Vole
The presence of water voles was detected in the Hogsmill by eDNA. Picture via Canva

Our WET Hogsmill project will enhance the river to make it more accessible and more useable for these species, aiding their recolonisation of the river. Environmental DNA is a great tool for us to demonstrate where these species are living along the river. The aim is that over time this will document increases in the numbers of places where specific species are found along the river.

So far we have undertaken a baseline eDNA survey at several points along the Hogsmill, from near its source, to its confluence with the Thames at Kingston. We collected water samples that were used to detect a wide variety of vertebrate species. We found mammals including red fox, grey squirrels, and wood mice. We detected fish including barbel, chubb, stickleback, and many others. We also found birds including the majestic kingfisher, grey heron, magpie, moorhen, coots, and parakeets.

Importantly, we also detected the presence of eel, water vole and brown trout at locations on the Hogsmill, so we know those species are present and we hope that our work will help them to become better established on the river.

The initial survey’s results can be found on our Storymap and we will continue to monitor the river with annual eDNA surveys – so watch this space!