"Endangered water voles are ready to recolonise the streams and rivers of the New Forest 24 years after animal activists inadvertently wiped them out by releasing 7,000 mink from a fur farm.
In 1998 members of the Animal Liberation Front raided the farm in Ringwood, Hants, and slashed open cages to let out the voracious predators.
At the time ecologists slammed the act, saying the marauding mammals would endanger local wildlife which could take years to recover.
About 2,000 of the escaped American mink were shot or run over by local farmers and landowners or caught in traps.
Among the native species targeted by the carnivorous creatures was the local population of water voles, the small aquatic rodents immortalised in Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows.
Numbers of water voles in the UK have massively declined in recent years due to habitat loss, housing development and pollution, but in the New Forest they were obliterated by the impact of the mink."