North Yorkshire resort Flamingo Land has begun the construction of an on-site hatchery for crayfish.
The hatchery will house captive-born crayfish from spring 2024, with the aim to bring in wild females with eggs by summer 2025.
The goal of the collaboration is to bolster wild populations around North Yorkshire, once the hatchery is fully operational.
The scheme is in collaboration with the North Yorkshire Crayfish Forum (NYCF). The forum was created to help conserve the endangered white-clawed crayfish in North Yorkshire.
North Yorkshire’s crayfish populations are undergoing declines due to habitat loss, pollution and competition from invasive species, primarily the signal crayfish, which carries crayfish plague – a disease that can cause 100% mortality in a native population.
Due to increased pressure from these threats and the increased vulnerability to predators, only about 5% of young crayfish survive to adulthood; however, the Flamingo Land hatchery may increase the survival rate by up to 90%.
The hatchery at Flamingo Land will be part of the Forum’s ‘Claws for Thought: saving North Yorkshire’s native crayfish’ project.
Flamingo Land’s conservation officer Kieran Holliday says “This is an extremely ambitious project for us here, and we are proud to be involved in a programme that could help with the conservation of a unique and keystone Endangered species.
“I am keen for Flamingo Land to be a key player in native species conservation in North Yorkshire and beyond, and my ambition is that we continue to get involved in these breeding, release and rewilding projects to a point where Flamingo Land is a key stakeholder in North Yorkshire conservation.”
While a first for North Yorkshire, there are a number of other successful, white-clawed crayfish hatcheries around the UK – but this will be the first to incorporate solar power, in addition to the standard practise of rainwater harvesting, helping to fulfil Flamingo Land’s ambition to be more sustainable.