A refuge for a threatened species in Northumberland rivers has been created on a National Trust estate.
An old cattle drinking hole at Wallington in Northumberland will become the charity’s first “Ark” site for the native white-clawed crayfish. Populations have more than halved across Europe in recent decades largely due to the spread of the American signal crayfish, a bigger species which was introduced to the UK in the 1970s for restaurant use.
It out-competes the white-clawed crayfish for food and habitat, and also carries a plague that while harmless to itself, can devastate white-clawed populations in a matter of weeks. Now the National Trust hopes to give the native species a lifeline by moving up to 100 of the crustaceans into an “Ark” site – a safe waterbody where it is hoped they will breed.
