IN ONE of the best pieces of good news from the countryside in years, Oxford University scientists have uncovered a secret war on the river bank - and for a change, the Brits are winning.

Plans to reintroduce the Otter to Dales rivers

The warring parties in this case are the native otter - which was nearly wiped out by pesticides thirty years ago - and marauding American mink, which took over the territories left empty by the missing otters having been released from fur farms by animal rights protestors.

But the Wildlife Observation Unit at Oxford has discovered that in areas where otters have been released back into the wild, they actually hunt down and kill the mink - a massive benefit for native wildlife because the American invaders have virtually wiped out mammals like the water vole and have killed millions of kingfishers and bank martins in their nesting burrows.

Otter colonies have become re-established in various parts of England and Wales in areas like the Norfolk Broads and environmentalists are trying to bring them back to the more remote areas of the Yorkshire Dales liker Upper Wharfedale and Langstrothdale.

They have been reported in Lunesdale, just 20 or 30 miles away, but in the meantime the mink remains supreme: they are rampant in Upper Airedale and breed within a mile of the centre of Skipton.

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