Native wildlife under threat

9:08am Tuesday 26th August 2008

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WHEN news broke in 2006 that a turtle was living in an Andover lake we should not have been surprised.

According to British Water-ways several exotic species are now at home in Britain's 2,200 mile waterway network.

British Waterways says it is battling around a dozen non-native invasive species that are choking off native wildlife and the organisation has issued a plea for people to think again about the environmental impact of plants and pets they dispose of.

The worst offenders are Japanese knotweed, Aus-tralian swamp stonecrop, giant hogweed, Himalayan balsam, water fern, floating pennywort, Chinese mitten crab, red-eared terrapin, mink, zander, American signal crayfish and zebra mussels.

Chris John, British Water-ways national ecologist, said: "Whilst not all non-native species are harmful, many pose real problems to our native wildlife, to boaters and to our historic channels, locks and bridges.

"With no natural predators to control them they can overwhelm wildlife, channels, banks and towpaths.

"British Waterways invests a large amount of time and money to protect our canals and rivers through identifying, monitoring and controlling damaging species.

"This is very costly and diverts resources that could be used elsewhere on the waterway network.

"We are therefore asking people to help us by disposing of non-native plants safely and carefully selecting alternative plants for gardens, ponds and aquariums."

The turtles that have been seen in the Anton lakes are thought to have been creatures released in the wake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle craze which swept Britain in the early 1990s.