Police probe theft of rare crayfish

Feb 5 2009 by Liz Hands, The Journal

COULD they be making a tasty morsel on North East dinner plates?

Endangered crayfish are disappearing from a Northumberland river. And police and environment investigators want to know where they have gone.

They have launched an investigation amid fears people have been illegally taking protected white-clawed crayfish from the River Wansbeck.

The river is one of the few areas where the British white-clawed crayfish have not been threatened by pollution, disease and competition from invasive American signal crayfish, which carry a deadly plague.

The competing crayfish, which breed at a fast rate, are such a problem for our native ones that TV chef Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall featured an item on trapping and cooking the invaders on his River Cottage show. The worry is that poachers are catching the native white-clawed crayfish, which are protected by law, rather than their American cousins, for eating.

Conservationists rate the River Wansbeck as one of the most important places for the species in the world, so any threat to the white-clawed crayfish is taken very seriously.