Walking through the village of Low Utley with the kids this morning a strange little animal scurried across the road in front of us just a few feet away. Ernie spotted it first of course but it didn’t seem concerned as it had a little think, turned around and crossed back in front of us again. My brain was having a little difficulty working it out. Was it a black squirrel or a strangely squashed black cat? A stoat I thought but head to toe black? A couple walking past with their dogs said it might have been a mink.
A little research informs me it’s a Black American mink. A predator imported in the 1920’s for their fur. It decimates our river life and needs reporting. My local facebook group confirmed more sightings and so I reported it to Bradford council and the Waterlife Recovery Trust.
I got a lovely but sad email reply from the trust:
”Waterlife Recovery Trust staff are currently working in the south and east of England, as far north as Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire. If your sighting is within this area we may be in touch for further information, or to see if there might be the opportunity to deploy some equipment.
For other parts of the UK where we currently don’t have staff, please rest assured your sightings are still vitally important to us. They help build a picture of what the mink population is looking like in counties we have yet to reach, and give us the evidence needed when applying for grants to allow us to expand our field operations. Our unambiguous objective is to remove all invasive American mink from Britain, transforming prospects for the native wildlife that we all love.”
It was within a few minutes of reading this that the analogy hit me: imported species becoming invasive predators. If only we could utilise the same ”live-capture trapping followed by swift, professional dispatch”.
One can dream.
