Loch Lomondside by John Mitchell

Author:John Mitchell [John Mitchell ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007406715
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Fig. 9.12 Probably an inadvertent introduction, the summer snowflake is very much at home in flood woodlands beside the River Endrick.

Thanks to the vigilance of officers from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (formerly the Clyde River Purification Board in the Loch Lomond area) and the Angling Association bailiffs, pollution of watercourses within the Endrick catchment has been kept to a minimum, although there have been several individual serious incidents. With generally good water quality throughout, the otter population on the river has continued to thrive at a time when the species was in decline in many parts of lowland Britain. The number of otter territories on the Endrick is less determined by food availability than by the presence or absence of riverside vegetation unaffected by stock grazing or bank erosion. Otters require well-developed river bank cover where they can lie up during the day, safe and undisturbed. Trees at the water’s edge with partially exposed roots are particularly favoured for otters’ breeding dens or holts, studies showing that it is the females that hold the individual territories, the males ranging over two or three. Compared to the satisfactory status of the otter, the water vole (Arvicola amphibius) (Fig. 9.13) has fared badly. The once-thriving population of water voles on the Endrick, which had proved resilient to the colonisation of the river banks by the predacious brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), unwittingly introduced to Loch Lomondside by commercial boat traffic in the nineteenth century, has been unable to absorb the additional losses from mink.

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