Removing Mink from the Sherborne Brook
Thanks to supporters of the Brook Group for putting me in touch with the Waterlife Recovery Trust. This group is running a national campaign to remove invasive mink from the countryside. Mink are an invasive species and can cause devastation to a lot of wild fowl stocks, water voles and the like. It's been estimated that every live free-roaming mink will kill approximately 500 creatures in its lifetime. And they are killing machines. They do not just kill what they need to eat; they kill everything they come across.
Within Gloucestershire, Josh is leading the effort, and I was put in touch with him by someone from the group last week. Today he came along to set up a monitored trap on my stretch of the Sherborne Brook. The trap sends a text message if a mink is trapped in it, and then members of the trust or their supporters will come along immediately and remove it from the habitat here. I know the Waterlife Recovery Trust are going to have some discussions with the National Trust, and I'm pleased to say that another monitored trap was placed upstream from me.
If you'd like to look at the trap, by all means come along and talk to me, and I'll show you it. If we ever catch a mink (I've not seen one here in 19 years), I'll let you know with some photographs.
In perhaps related news, I'm getting a lot of reports of many hedgehogs in the area, many more than are normally seen, so that's a good sign for a wide range of species in the Sherborne brook habitat. I said a few weeks ago that I'd seen many more weasels than normal, so I guess these swings in population are probably natural, but it's interesting to see.
Two other things to note. The first is I have received notice that there is going to be a Windrush Catchment Partnership meeting in early July that I will be attending represent our views. I'm going to raise some questions following on from the last meeting that I informed you about, where I expressed our concerns about the sewage processing at Bourton-on-the-Water, where our sewage, in theory, goes to be treated. During the early months of the year, it seemed to be bypassing that and going straight into the Windrush. These are the questions I'll be asking the Thames Water representative, who hopefully will turn up this time:
A. I'd like to understand the current status of the Bourton Sewage Treatment Works upgrade, including dates to finish and what this last winter’s 1000 hour overflow told us. I'll be clear that we are pleased to see no further overflow since 14 March.
B. I'd like an explanation of how the monitors can show live discharges of overflowing sewage at a specific time and the next day show the discharge had ceased by that time.
C. What the justification was for slipping the target resolution date to get Bourton STW to government target standards from 2040 to 2050, (this slip happened without explanation). Is there a budget? With no budget and a 2050 date, then the aspiration is essentially useless.
Let me know if there are other issues that you wish me to raise.
Finally, there was a suggestion today that my blog site or emails had been hacked and people were getting spurious messages relating specifically to Sherborne not actually from me. This is not the case. I have a very secure system running to the highest of industry standards. I've checked it, and there is no evidence of any spurious emails coming from the Sherborne Brook Support Group. You can see every single one of the Brook Group blog posts at this website, in chronological order. https://sherbornebrooksupport.mymagic.page.
Please talk to me if you have any concerns. If you think you received an email that you have some doubt about, then please forward it to me. Be assured I maintain the recipients' email listings to very high standards of security. Apparently these supposed emails (I've not seen one yet) referred specifically to individuals in Sherborne, so that's quite curious. They weren't from me, either deliberately or by hacking.
