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White-clawed crayfish

How white-clawed crayfish are threatened and how we are helping them.

Threats to white-clawed crayfish

The UK’s native white-clawed crayfish have been under attack from their American relative, the signal crayfish, since the 1970s. Signal crayfish carry a deadly plague that has killed off a large number of native white-clawed crayfish.

White-clawed crayfish are also threatened by competition for food and habitat from signal crayfish, and pollution.

How we are helping white-clawed crayfish

We have supported many partnership projects to help white-clawed crayfish over the past five years including:

  • Byelaws to prevent the use of crayfish as live-bait for angling
  • Non-native crayfish eradication research
  • Surveys of crayfish populations
  • Investigating the harvesting of native crayfish from the wild for use in a breeding programme.

For more information on white-clawed crayfish conservation see the UK Biodiversity Action Plan website.