Writtle conservation expert, Alan Roscoe, has been busy putting together November's wildlife watch. This month provides a fantastic entry about crayfish!
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Your blogger is very keen on crayfish sandwiches but his
interest in these animals extends far beyond what he had for his lunch.
The chunky crayfish which turn up in sandwiches are
commercially harvested American Signal Crayfish but there is a dark side to
your lunchtime snack. In recent decades these non-native animals have escaped
from captivity but, in doing so, they have brought problems for their smaller
British cousin, the White-clawed Crayfish.
Our much more delicate native species has succumbed in huge
numbers to a disease carried by the American species and the situation is now
so grave that some of the White-clawed populations have been removed from their
natural homes and re-housed away from the threat in so-called ‘ark’ sites.
This month Writtle Conservation students have visited one of
these sites to help monitor the success of one of these re-homing projects. In
conjunction with Essex Wildlife Trust, Essex Biodiversity Project, wildlife
consultancy EECOS and the Environment Agency (yes, it takes a lot of people to
save just one species!) our students trapped several crayfish and took their
vital statistics. Work like this is essential to help monitor whether the
population remains viable…. but it also gives Writtle undergraduates valuable
hands-on experience and a head-start in the conservation sector.
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