In January 2024 – just 3 months after Derbyshire and Staffordshire Wildlife Trusts’ Dove Catchment Water Vole Recovery Project kicked off in earnest – the Waterlife Recovery Trust (WRT) announced that they had successfully eradicated the breeding population of American mink in East Anglia.

This was the culmination of years of work, and an intensive trapping programme spanning the preceding four years, which enabled them to rid miles of river and hundreds of square miles of wetlands from the invasive species. This incorporated hundreds of traps, collectively deployed for thousands of days, to clear the maze of East Anglian waterways.

American mink are well known to be voracious predators, but they are primarily known for being one of the key drivers of the dramatic decline in water vole populations in the last few decades – numbers have fallen 90% since the 1970s, making water voles one of the UK’s fastest declining mammals. American mink can devastate water vole populations, with male mink able to eat two water voles a day, every day, and female mink able to fit in water vole burrows, where they will take any young they find there.

Water vole distribution remains just a fraction of what it was 60 years ago, estimated in 2024 to be between 58,000 – 186,000 individuals.

However, their fortunes have been rather reversed in East Anglia. Once mink began to be removed, water vole populations started to resurge, so strongly the team had to invent water vole excluders, guards which fit around the trap entrance and which water voles are less likely to climb over, because they were catching so many water voles (these were, of course, released unharmed). 

After over five years of hard work and intensive trapping, the WRT team announced in January 2024 that they had eliminated the breeding population of American mink from the trapping area.

Following on from their success, they have expanded their working areas – and paved the way for teams in other areas to follow suit.

Now, mink control is becoming more widespread across the country, with increasing numbers of organisations and individuals joining the fight against this non-native species – as demonstrated by the maps below, which show the location of mink traps registered with the WRT).

The location of mink traps deployed across north Staffordshire, Derbyshire, west Lincolnshire and south Yorkshire, and registered with the Waterlife Recovery Trust. Source: Waterlife Recovery Trust

The location of mink traps deployed across the north east Midlands/south Yorkshire and registered with the Waterlife Recovery Trust. The traps in the square represent traps in Derbyshire and the Dove Catchment in Staffordshire.  Source: Waterlife Recovery Trust

The location of mink traps deployed in England and registered with the Waterlife Recovery Trust. Source: Waterlife Recovery Trust

The WRT expanded its operations west-wards, into areas of Kent and East Sussex, before their attention also turned to the Thames to Lincolnshire region, a huge tract of England extending from north London up through Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, east Northamptonshire, Rutland and into Lincolnshire. The Thames to Lincolnshire wave of the project rapidly deployed over 620 mink traps, trapping over 500 mink in 8 months. As of January 2025, Lincolnshire alone had 542 smart traps active. 

New organisations in more areas are partnering with the WRT all the time, and more mink had been caught across the UK by WRT partners between January and July 2025 than in the whole of 2023, clearly demonstrating how the movement is expanding across the UK. This is despite the decline in catches from counties which have been trapped for longer – which is more than being made up for by the surge of catches in new areas.

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, along with neighbouring Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, joined the list of partner organisations in 2023, and we have since contributed as much data as possible from our traps deployed across the Dove Catchment.

Our project began in October 2023, reaching 500km of river covered by traps in March 2025, and as of August 2025 we have removed over 230 mink from the catchment. Already we have received anecdotal reports that there are more fish and water birds present on sections of the river this year, with more chicks being seen than in previous years – whilst this is not provably down to the reduction in mink numbers, it is encouraging news nevertheless!

Ideally moving forward, we are looking to expand into neighbouring catchments. Moving into abutting areas helps mitigate against animals moving between catchments, for example mink in neighbouring catchments recolonising the Dove Catchment.

Hopefully soon we will see the network of mink traps out spreading further across the country to ‘join up’ the river catchments protected by traps – it is not until everywhere is trapped that we can truly say we have removed the threat to our precious native wildlife.

Happily, data from the WRT (about to be published in a scientific journal) demonstrates how water voles recover in number and geographical range once sustained, landscape-scale mink trapping has been set up – sometimes seemingly from nowhere! As expected, water voles have been caught in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, where there are the most traps and the fewest mink – but water voles have even begun to be caught in Lincolnshire – which has been trapped for a relatively short time, and where mink were extremely abundant.

This indicates that water voles have been able to cling on where there is appropriate habitat for them to take refuge in, and offers hope to new partners that water voles can and do bounce back – not to mention the myriad of other wildlife that will benefit, such as kingfishers, waterbirds, fish and small mammals – soon our riverbanks will be teeming with all these species which have suffered under the mink’s tyrannic reign!

Nationwide strategic mink trapping is the ideal; as our landscapes, and our waterways especially, are all so connected, it will be crucial to see mink control programmes spreading across the country, so we’re very glad to see more of our colleagues stepping up to the plate! 

As for water voles, well, we look forward to the day when that unmistakable ‘plop’ can be heard along the Dove catchment’s waterways once again!

For more information on the work we have been doing to help protect and revive water vole populations on the Dove catchment, check out the Water Vole Recovery Project webpage.