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Voles on rolls

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Where to begin...  It's been four years since I last wrote a blog post and I feel that it's about time that I started with a clean slate. Those that used to follow my blog back in 2012/2013 may recall my pre-university Kalahari* Desert adventures. I spent six months working at the Kalahari* Meerkat Project assisting with the day-to-day recording of meerkat behaviour and life history data. Since then I have completed a Bachelor's degree in Zoology at Swansea University and a Master's degree in Conservation Science at Imperial College London. It was the search for a suitable MSc thesis project which drew me to the Fens* of Cambridgeshire; where I'm now employed as Assistant to the Environmental Officer of the Middle Level Commissioners.         *Some technical terms, geographical locations and other explanatory information           are listed in a glossary at the foot of the page. For my thesis project, I researched the effectiveness...
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A sad otter's tale

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The purpose of this post is to raise awareness about otter road casualties and illegal or unintended trapping. Last week (9th January) saw the tragic death of a beautiful Eurasian otter ( Lutra lutra ). It was on my way to the Middle Level Commissioners (MLC) offices in March (Cambridgeshire) that I spotted the corpse on the side of a busy main road and I pulled over to take a look. Once I had reached the otter, I realised that it was probably a relatively young animal, since it wasn't much bigger than a domestic cat. The hind feet of the otter corpse (09/01/2018). With a pang of sadness (otters are one of my favourite animals), I saw that it had a head wound, most likely from a collision with a car. The pool of blood in which the otter lay was relatively fresh and very little smell issued from the body, indicating that it had not been there long, probably around 48 hours. A closer inspection of the animal revealed that its abdomen was slightly swollen and tha...
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ADA Gazette Spring 2018 Issue

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I'm chuffed to have my recent MSc water vole research mentioned in the Association of Drainage Authorities magazine the ADA Gazette !  I hope that water voles (the most rapidly declining native British mammal) in other parts of the UK can benefit from my Fenland research regarding their preference for coir roll revetments over other riparian management strategies. Cheers to Cliff Carson (Environmental Officer of the Middle Level Commissioners and MSc thesis supervisor) for writing the article and to the Association of Drainage Authorities for including it. The article (right hand side) printed on page 23 in the ADA Gazette Spring 2018 Issue. To discover more about my research findings, check out the summary report which is downloadable from the Middle Level Commissioners website .
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