Wildwood honoured for restoring Britain’s water voles.

The award was presented at a special ceremony held at Speaker’s House, where Wildwood Trust were joined by 25 other native species projects that had been shortlisted.

The scale and ambition of the conservation work taking place across Great Britain is truly breath taking and we’re honoured to be a part of the BIAZA community.

In July last year, Wildwood played a key role in the historic return of water voles to Surrey, where the species had been absent for decades. As one of the UK’s leading conservation breeding centres, we bred around 50 water voles, which were released into the Upper Hogsmill River and the newly restored Chamber Meads wetland in Epsom & Ewell.

Delivered in partnership with fellow rewilding organisation Citizen Zoo, the project followed years of work by South East Rivers Trust to create the healthy wetland habitat water voles need to thrive.

Their return marks a major milestone for local biodiversity and one of the most positive rewilding stories in southern England.

Paul Whitfield is Director General of Wildwood Trust:

“Winning this award is absolutely fantastic, as it is a real endorsement of the work Wildwood has been doing for the past two decades. This project involved the release of 50 water voles, and within that same breeding programme we also reached a major milestone – releasing our 2,000th captive-bred water vole back into the wild.

“We have an outstanding conservation team delivering these projects, and our work goes far beyond water voles. It includes red squirrels, pine martens, beavers and many more species. At present, we are running 12 active native species reintroduction projects, and we are aiming to increase that number to nearly 20 by the end of the year.”

Thank you to each and every one of our supporters! Rewilding, through the reintroduction of keystone species, is the most powerful tool we have.

We’ll continue on our mission to protect, conserve and rewild native British wildlife.

ENDS