#MuseumPassion

James' museum passion is wildlife conservation. The stories that go with saving a species are never straightforward, just like the story of polecats in Essex. Two specimens from 1834 and 2019 cover local people's efforts to eradicate and reintroduce the polecat in two very different times.

In 1834, this polecat was probably caught by a gamekeeper or landowner; polecats sometimes ate gamebirds and were treated as vermin by Victorian gamekeepers. They were driven extinct in Essex and much of the UK, only surviving as a small population in Wales. Polecats were also easily caught in rabbit traps and could only spread out from Wales when commercial rabbit trapping stopped in the 1950s, because the disease myxomatosis was introduced to reduce rabbit numbers instead. 

 

A release programme in Hertfordshire in the 1980s is probably the original source of the polecat population that has now spread back into Essex for the first time in over 100 years. This specimen was unfortunately found as roadkill in Saffron Walden in 2011, and mounted by a professional taxidermist for an exhibition in 2019, exploring our relationship with the natural environement of north-west Essex.

But it's not just polecats that benefit. Water voles disappeared from 90% of their range between the 1950s and 1990s, partly because of predation by American mink, which were released into the British countryside from former fur farms. With polecat numbers now increasing, American mink struggle to find enough shelter and other food, which means their numbers are falling. That means water vole numbers are now increasing, as polecats can’t and don’t hunt water voles.

Human interaction with nature is never simple, as the polecat's story shows!