Project to find and help pine martens in Shropshire

A project is hoping to discover more pine martens in Shropshire.

The rare mammals have been spotted in the county since about 2015.

Stepping Stones is a National Trust project, which has been given £500,000 through the Green Recovery Challenge Fund.

Project officer Charlie Bell said the some of the money will help continue its work in the south Shropshire hills, putting out camera traps in the hope of spotting them.

Den boxes will be put out to give the pine martens, who are members of the weasel family, a helping hand.

It is one of a number of projects being run under the Stepping Stones programme, which is working to link patches of habitat within in the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

"In south Shropshire we are lucky enough to have one of the very few English pine marten populations," she said.

"They are absolutely brilliant, they are charismatic, they are beautiful and they are really important for Stepping Stones.

"They thrive in big patches of woodland but they also need those patches to be linked together so they can move around.

"Not only can we create more patches of woodland for them but we can link them together help them move through the landscape, expand their populations and really thrive in south Shropshire."

Ms Bell said the money is "brilliant news" to help it continue its work.

Shropshire Wildlife Trust said pine martens were present until the end of the 1800s, but were presumed to have been persecuted to extinction.

The first pine martens in over a century were successfully discovered in Shropshire in 2015 and at least 20 individuals have been photographed since.

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