ACTION is being taken in a bid to stop an army of greedy voles from devouring trees in an Oughtrington wood.

And there are so many of the small rodents at work in Spud Wood that even kestrels are unable to eat enough of them to keep the population in balance.

So environmentally-friendly residents in the area have been putting down some 15,000 vole guards in the wood, where thousands of trees have been planted by members of the community.

The guards, which look like plastic toilet roll tubes, are gently pushed into the ground around the trees to prevent the voles getting to them.

Simon Mageean, of The Woodland Trust, said: "It is quite remarkable. When I walked through the wood last summer, I must have seen six or seven field voles at every step.

"We just didn't expect this, which is why when the wood was first planted, we did not put in vole guards.

"There's been a vole population explosion and they're eating all the tree bark they can find. Once they get going, trees are ring barked and almost eaten through. We have to act now to save the wood."

Spud Wood was created in 1997 as part of The Woodland Trust's Woods On Your Doorstep project, funded by the Millennium Commission.

Oughtrington residents helped to raise money for the project and schoolchildren named it Spud Wood because the land used to be a potato field.

Hundreds of people turned out to plant saplings and now the birch trees are more than 10 feet tall, while the oak and ash trees have reached around the six feet mark.

Ash bark is the voles' favourite food, although they also enjoy bark from oak and cherry trees and all the shrubs in the wood.