EVIDENCE of how wildlife has been thriving in Wellington Basins since the town council took ownership with a 150-year lease has been captured on video by retired fisheries specialist Richard Chivers.

Mr Chivers was walking home across the Basins to Seymour Street from Rockwell Green on Thursday evening (March 27) at about 5 pm when he was able to film a water vole with his mobile phone.

It was the third of the endearing tiny creatures he had spotted within minutes along the middle section of the Basins footpath before he was able to catch one on film.

Mr Chivers, who moved to Wellington about 40 years ago, is one of the helpers who have just completed the planting of 3,000 trees around the Basins by the council and Transition Town Wellington.

He said: “I was looking out for them because it was that time of the evening.

“I thought I saw one in the stream but it had gone, then I definitely saw one shuffling off the bank in the greenery but that one disappeared as well.

“Then, I came across this one sat there eating grass until a lady came along with a pushchair and ‘plop’, it went into the water and away.”

Quite appropriately, the sightings by Mr Chivers happened just feet from a town council interpretation board erected to tell walkers about the voles they might spot there.

Mr Chivers, who has worked all over the world, from the Arctic to Australia, is a keen wildlife watcher and last year counted four water voles he spotted.

He has also seen otters in the Basins area over the past few years, two near Thunderbridge, a mother with kits in the stream, and one crossing a road as he was driving.

The Wildlife Trusts, a grassroots movement of people from all walks of life working together to protect nature, said water voles were endangered and under serious threat from habitat loss and predation.

They live along rivers, streams, and ditches, and around ponds and lakes, in marshes, reedbeds, and areas of wet moorland.

Water voles can be identified by their chestnut-brown fur, blunt and rounded nose, small ears, and furry tail, and they are significantly larger than other species of vole.

Tennis ball-size burrow entrances along the river bank give an indication of their presence, as well as large ‘latrines’ close to the water where they leave their droppings.

They are considered to be a keystone species which indicates healthy riverine habitats and plant communities.

Unfortunately for water voles, they are also a significant food source for larger species such as otters and herons, which are both also known to populate the Basins area.

A town council spokesperson said Wellington was fortunate to have a thriving population of water voles in the Basins.

The spokesperson advised Basins walkers could help to protect the creatures by not disturbing vegetation along the riverbanks and keeping dogs under control when passing, and to keep litter from entering the waterways.