Water for Wildlife launch
Water for Wildlife was officially launched in the superb setting of the Headland Hotel in Newquay in November 2002. Over 100 guests attended the conference to hear speakers talking about a range of issues on the importance of water, wetlands and land use.

Anthony Gibson, regional director of the National Farmers Union and local hero during the foot and mouth disease epidemic, provided a superb start by exploring the significance of our environment to the profitability of family farming in Cornwall (and vice versa). A farmer gave a dramatic insight into the struggle of running a Cornish family farm, using wildlife as indicators of our use or misuse of water. Other topics included climate change, how our treatment of fresh water impacts on the marine environment, the Water Framework Directive, local examples of restoration and creation projects and the challenges they face.

Many thanks to Anthony Gibson and the other speakers: Matthew Dale (farmer), Vic Simpson (Wildlife Veterinary Investigation Centre), Lyn Jenkins (Regional Environment Agency), Vicky Garner (Surfers Against Sewage), John Holmes (Cornwall Biodiversity Initiative Chairman/English Nature). Thank you also to Roger Trengove, Bruce

Hewett and Dan Cooke of Pennon Water Champions for chairing, welcoming and closing the day.

Water for Wildlife is a national initiative sponsored by Water UK and The Wildlife Trusts and at a local level by Pennon Water Champions, CWT and the Environment Agency.

It's a black-and-white case
We simply don't know enough about the water shrew. We fear we have lost the water vole in the county and we don't want the same to happen to the water shrew. We are training people in how to look for their signs, carrying out county-wide survey work, raising public awareness as well as collecting and sending water shrew corpses to Vic Simpson's Wildlife Veterinary Investigation Centre (VIC) for post mortems. This unusual project has attracted one of the first ever grants from a new

mammal organisation - Mammals Trust UK. If you see a water shrew, want some surveying tubes or your cat has brought you a corpse as a present, please get in touch with Alex Howie or me on 01872 245514.

Operation Otter Cub:
complete
She's gone! The female otter, now a year old, escaped from her release pen a week before we had planned. It goes to prove that there are no hard and fast rules when wildlife is involved. The good news is that this means she was ready to go and we have taken care of her for long enough. A big thank you to all involved. It's been a complex operation - see a very basic breakdown of the support in the box below.

Very special thanks to our anonymous carers and to the RSPCA.

Kate Stokes