Endangered Ratty gets legal protection

Nearly 12 years after conservationists asked government to help save the disappearing water vole, the whiskered creature that inspired the character Ratty in Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows - along with seahorses, a shark and an edible snail - has become one of Britain's most protected species.

From later this week, anyone who kills, injures or even disturbs Ratty in the ditches or rivers it inhabits could be landed with a £5,000 fine or six months imprisonment under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. "We have had protection for the water vole's habitats, but not for the animals themselves. There have been incidents of them being shot by air rifles and some have been trapped at fisheries, but many have been persecuted by local authorities and pest control agencies," said John Everitt, head of conservation at the Wildlife Trusts. "It's taken a very long time to get this protection. If the water vole had been fully protected from the outset we could have avoided a lot of its decline," said Everitt.



Water voles are one of the fastest declining of Britain's mammal species and populations are believed to have crashed nearly 90% in the last 20 years. American minks have wiped them out as they spread up rivers, ditches and dykes, pest controllers have used poison indiscriminately against them and many have not survived attempts to relocate them.

Extra protection will also be given to the edible roman snail, angel sharks, spiny seahorses and short-snouted seahorses, whose populations are thought to have been decimated by decades of over-fishing, pollution and disturbance by boats.