A COLONY of the rare white-clawed crayfish, Britain’s only native species of crayfish, has been wiped out. The Environment Agency reported that hundreds of crayfish had been found dead on the River Dove in Derbyshire - a fishing spot immortalised by Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton in The Compleat Angler. Laboratory reports have now confirmed the cause as crayfish plague.

The native white-clawed crayfish is already an endangered species and populations are declining. It is no match for its invasive foreign cousin, the American signal crayfish, which was originally introduced into this country for food, but escaped into the wild where they outcompete the smaller and less aggressive native white-clawed species. Signal crayfish carry the fungal disease ‘crayfish plague’ to which native species have no immunity and any remaining native crayfish downstream of the outbreak are unlikely to survive.

Phil Wormald of the Environment Agency, , said: “This outbreak highlights the importance of protecting native crayfish populations and preventing the spread of diseases between river catchments. We may never know how the disease was introduced into the River Dove but there are measures that people can take to help us prevent such an ecological disaster happening again.”

To protect native species:

· non-native species of fish or crayfish must not be introduced into waters in England and Wales except under licence

· all removals, transfers and introductions of fish and crayfish to waters in England and Wales must be licensed by the Environment Agency

· you must have an English Nature licence before handling white-clawed crayfish

· you must return any native crayfish caught inadvertently, to the water it came from

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish European Fish Trader, Fishing Monthly, Fish Farming Today, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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