Water voles have declined dramatically in recent years

The British Vole Club blames the imported American minks - many of which have escaped into the wild from farms - for the decline in voles.

Numbers of the British vole - which inspired Ratty's character in the children's classic The Wind in the Willows - have plunged from seven million to less than a million in a decade.

And the club hopes the new savage slogan will highlight the plight of the shy vole.

Vole Club secretary Mark Pattison, from Newbury, Berkshire, said: "It's not about going out with shotguns, it's just a campaign to raise money to get more mink traps.

"Water voles are an endangered species that are being wiped out by minks which have been released into the wild by misguided idiots.

"The vole is part of our heritage and they don't upset anyone.

"For people in the country they symbolise everything that we hold dear.

"The 'mince a mink and save a vole' slogan is just an attempt to look for money to get more mink traps which are used by the Environment Agency to catch the minks."

A spokesman for the RSPCA said it accepts projects which are trying to eradicate mink from certain areas, but warns live traps must be used by a competent person.

"The society does not advocate just anybody going out to trap mink and would not want this to be encouraged," he said.

"Where animals are to be destroyed a method of killing must be used that causes minimum fear and renders the animal insensible to pain and distress until death supervenes."