Harry Phibbs: We must eradicate mink to save the water vole from extinction. The Guardian

Harry Phibbs: Farmers and misguided animal rights activists have unleashed a furry reign of terror on the water vole

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"By it and with it and on it and in it," said the water rat in The Wind in the Willows. "It's brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing."

The only problem is that all too many of Ratty's cousins are being gobbled up by mink.

The creature Kenneth Grahame was writing about should more properly be referred to as a water vole. Their future is hanging by a thread. Alastair Driver, chairman of the UK Water Vole Steering Group says: "Over the last 15 years or so, the water vole has undergone one of the most catastrophic declines of a species ever known in the UK – a far more rapid decline than that suffered by the charismatic mega fauna of Africa or Asia – and it has happened here right under our noses."

The Tory MP Andrew Robathan has proposed the complete eradication of mink after he travelled 137 miles, mostly on the Grand Union canal, and did not see a single water vole. The mink were brought over to this country from the United States to live on fur farms.

Some escaped, some were set free by the farmers giving up their stock when facing a ban – a sentimental and convenient but utterly irresponsible way to behave. Most staggeringly, some of the mink have been released by animal rights activists.

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