Ancestor Gateway Forum - STAMFORD MEMORIES GATEWAY (Lincolnshire England) used as PRIDE and PREJUDICE FILM SET New Topic  |  Search Thread Topic: MINK in Stamford Topic Originator: Mike Laughton Post Date April 9, 2017 @ 7:10 PM  MINK in Stamford Mike Laughton April 9, 2017 @ 7:10 PM Reply  |  Email  |  Print  |  Top Has anyone heard of any reports of wild MINK in the Stamford area recently? Mink are a member of the polecat family and look like a big black or very dark brown ferret. They tend to live by rivers but often hunt in people's garden and have been known to enter homes and kill small pets and birds. The first one I knew of in the Stamford area was about 25 years ago when a town resident living in the Empingham Road area killed one in his garage, He brought it into the Stamford Mercury office to be photographed with it. The only live one I have seen close up was in a friend's garden in Tinwell. Sure enough the previous night her grandson's pet budgie had been mysteriously  killed in its cage. Mink were native to the United States and the wild mink we now have were originally in fur farms in the 1960s and 70s until such fur farming was banned. Animal rights activists were also responsible for releasing thousands of the creatures into the wild not realising they would take over the habitat of native species such at the Water Vole. Voles were a common site around the River Welland when I was young but I haven't seen one for years. Thanks  to the mink there are now only a few hundred water vole left in the UK.