20 20 April 2019 | TheTelegraph Magazine Wallabies Seen on the Isle of Man, Peak District, Ashdown Forest in Sussex, Norfolk/Lincolnshire border, an island in Loch Lomond, Berkshire and B ki h hi kunks onfirmed ngs in the t of Dean, estershire Coatis These raccoon- like mammals have been sighted in Cumbria and Buckinghamshire Red-eared slider terrapins Native to the US and northern Mexico, this is one of the top 100 most invasive species in the world. Often seen in urban parks Dolphins Spotted in Cornwall and other West Country areas: Britain has its own pod which remains in the UK all year round Sharks There are now 32 different species found in British waters Document: 1020CC-DTMMS-1-200419-A020C-XX.pdf;Format:(230.00 x 270.00 mm);Date: 12.Apr 2019 17:11:58; Telegraph
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20 20 April 2019 | TheTelegraph Magazine
WallabiesSeen on the Isle of Man,Peak District, Ashdown
Forest in Sussex,Norfolk/Lincolnshire
border, an island in LochLomond, Berkshire and
B ki h hi
kunksonfirmedngs in thet of Dean,estershire
20
Buckinghamshire
SkUncosightinForestGlouc
CoatisThese raccoon-
like mammals havebeen sighted inCumbria and
Buckinghamshire
Red-earedslider terrapins
Native to the US andnorthern Mexico, this isone of the top 100 mostinvasive species in theworld. Often seen in
urban parks
DolphinsSpotted in Cornwalland other West
Country areas: Britainhas its own pod whichremains in the UKall year round
TO A VISITOR, ESPECIALLY A VISITOR fromEngland, the landscape of the Isle of Man ismarkedasmuchbyabsenceas it is abundance.Ona tour of the tiny island’smany beautiful, verdant
youwill seeno foxes, badgers or deer – theybothered crossing the Irish sea. Youwon’tnymoles, otters,dormiceor squirrels either.or is there a branch of Sainsbury’s, or any-who pays a reasonable rate of tax, thoughanother story.)t on the far north-west corner of the island,g the flora and fauna that have always been– technicolour butterflies, four-horned, a surprising number of hare species – is amal that has no right to havemade its homeIsle ofMan at all. It is grey, with a nape ther of Irn-Bru. It can grow to almost 6ft longhead to tail, despite having terrible posture.
It carries its blind young in a pouch – until theycanbring themselves togetout, almost 10monthslater. It can bound across a field faster thanUsainB lt. It ismeant to live 10,000miles away, andyet
some reason it’s here, on the Isle of Man,oying the life of Riley. And I’mgoing to find it.I must say before we set out – and I say this toryone – I cannot guaranteewe’ll see anywalla-s,’ says John Callister, from beneath a nattystern hat bejewelled with dozens of badges,scots and awillow triskelion, the Celtic symbolhreearmour-clad legs that appearseverywherethe Isle ofMan. It’s a glorious spring day. ‘We’lle it a go. Some days we see lots, other times wenothing. Imake nopromises.’Born and raised on the island, Callister, who is
BEASTQUEST
allabies on the Isle of Man? Skunksthe Forest of Dean? Mink just aboutrywy here… Guy Kelly reports on thery, scaly, finned aliens who’ve made
their home on our shores
Wild boarsReintroduced to Brita
in the 1970s, andprevalent in the Foresof Dean, as numbersgrew they became th
subject of a cull
BQ
Wain tevefur
Boltforenjo
‘Ieverbieswesmasof thon tgivesee n
B
in
stse
TEma
Muntjac (chinesewater deer)
Originally from China butwere introduced to WoburnPark, Bedfordshire, in 1838.Ten per cent of the world’s
population now live inthe UK
Yellow-tailedscorpions
Found living in thewalls of SheernessDocks in Kent.
why they misjudge distances clearing thetrenches.’ (Later we discover four wallaby skele-tons lodged in the stickybanksofoneparticularlywide ditch. Poor old Skip.)
T o the layman, the success of a few wallabycommunities around theBritish Islesmakesthemoneof themost curious and surprising
alien species of recent decades – which is under-standable given their size, and helped by the factwe all knowwhere they’remeant to live.
In reality, however, they’re just one of around3,000 foreign invaders creeping, crawling, swim-ming, slitheringandflyingaround these islands in2019 – and one of the more harmless. Wallabieshave been the cause of a few disgruntled farmersover the years, who deem them over-grazers orpossible vectors for disease, but they come inpeace: aminority justminding theirownbusiness.
‘There’s always a bit of a debate aboutwhethersomething is an invasive species or just non-native or introduced. Invasive species generallycauseharm, either tootherwildlife or tohumans,be that in a direct way or by harming our econ-omy,’ says Dan Eatherley, an environmental con-sultant and author of the upcoming InvasiveAliens: Plants and Animals FromOver There ThatAreOverHere. ‘Basically, invasive species ruinourfun. And there are somany of them.’
In general, alien species fit into one of threecategories. The first are the curious and extraor-dinary creatures that are unlikely to spread farand wide, which is normally a relief. A lot ofescaped zoo animals or exotic pets might fit intothis group – the wallabies, the periodic roaming‘big cat’ that rarely is, the Forest of Dean’sreported skunks, historic sightings of raccoon-like coatis in the Lake District – but so would the15,000-strong colony of yellow-tailed scorpions(two inches longwith a stingnoworse than abee:relax) that have lived in the cracks of walls inSheerness Docks in Kent since arriving on mer-chant ships from Italy in the 18th century. It’s atthis end of the scalewhere things tend to bemostfun, where urban legend can overtake real sight-ings; but it’s alsowhere everything starts.
While itmightbeexciting to thinkBritishwild-life is becomingmore andmore exotic, conserva-tionists around theworld believe the issue couldbe as important as climate change in threateningbiodiversity. It’swhere the secondgroup– recentinvaders that are already here, and already caus-ing trouble – come in. Grey squirrels are thefamous example, having been introduced fromNorth America in the 1870s and nowoutnumber-ing their native red counterparts bymore than 15to one, but that’s nothing on the Harlequin lady-bird: the fastest-invading species in UK history,which took just a decade to reach every corner ofthe countrybetween2004and2014, aheadof themuntjac deer and ring-necked parakeets.
Americanmink are also old-timers. Theywereimported in the 1920s for fur farms, but got out,stayed out, and haven’t stopped killing birds andsmall mammals since, despite ‘projects’ to ‘con-trol’ their numbers. They are now widespread
70, has a balding head under the hat, and a closewhitebeard that surroundsanearpermanentTig-ger grin. He is himself an increasingly rare breed:a joiner andcarpenterby trade, butwith theauxil-iary talents of a Swiss Army knife. Callister reck-onsheknowsmore about the Isle ofMan’sflowersthan just about anybody on the planet, Latinnames included–Latinnames especially.He’s alsoa poet, once serving as the officialManxBard, andwrites pub quizzes. He canweave just about any-thing fromwillow, but baskets and coffins are hisspeciality.Most people on the island knowhimorknow of him, it seems, except they don’t knowhimas John.OrCallister. They knowhimasDog.
‘It’s because I can lick a certain partof my anatomy!’ he shouts over thegroan of his van’s engine, after pickingmeup fromPeel, the island’smain fish-ing port, earlier in the day. A man ofmany talents indeed. ‘No, not really.When Iwas at school I played a charac-ter called PC Bulldog in a play. Every-one called me Bulldog for a bit, then itbecameDogandstuck. Ifigured I couldresist it or go alongwith it.’ Dog it is.
As well as all his other pursuits, Dog leadsnature walks in Ballaugh Curragh, an extraordi-nary wetland just north of Peel that’s recognisedby Unesco for its biodiversity. Once an ancientlake formed froman IceAge depression, it is nowa labyrinth of bog pools, marshy grassland, birchwoodland andwillow scrub, teemingwith other-wise rare birds, butterflies and flora, and navi-gated by a lattice of natural and subtlyman-madepaths thatDog knows inside out.
It is alsowallabycountry. In 1965,whenawild-life park opened nearby, a red-necked wallabynamed Wanda escaped from her enclosure andbounded around the island for almost a yearbefore she was returned ‘home’. The park evi-dently didn’t improve its security and Wandablazed a trail: numerous other escapes followed,and at some point a wild population was estab-lished. Now, the Isle of Man is the unlikely hometo the largest wallaby population (somewherebetween80and 100) in thenorthernhemisphere.
In thehoursbeforemeetingDog, everyperson Iencountered – admittedly just two taxi drivers anda hotel owner – had heard stories of the wallabiesbut hadn’t ever actually seen one. With this andDog’s prior warning of disappointment in mind, Idelicately (Doghas toldus tokeepourvoicesdown,lest we spook them) pad into the Curragh. Willtoday be our day? Will we get a glimpse of thismajestic Antipodean immigrant?Will I, a specula-tivevisitorwithan inflexibleeasyJet returnbookedfor the next day,manage to overcome…
photographer points into a dense patch of bogmyrtle just off the path. There, staring directlyback at us with an expression of almost weapon-ised indifference, is a wallaby. It seems we havecomeonagoodday.A fewfeet furtherup thepath
are four more, sunning themselves in a clearing.Normally solitary, fully grown adults are surpris-ingly large and, beingmainly active in the crepus-cular hours, lazy in themid-afternoon.We sit andwatch the group for a while, before a blur of greyshapes crash past us at terrifying speed. It’sanother three or four on the move. I can see nowwhy the collective noun is amob.
Dog,whospottedhisfirstwallabywhenhebeganwalking in thearea todiscover thefloradecadesago,tells me they’ve flourished in this corner of the Isleof Man (other, much smaller colonies of escapeeshavebeendocumented inStaffordshire, Sussex andon an island in Loch Lomond) thanks to a constella-
tion of good fortune. There’s a plentifulfood supply – grass, moss, weeds – ahealthy habitat and, as is the key withmost non-native species, a distinct lackof predators. In southern and easternAustralia, where red-necked wallabiesarenative, jackals, foxes, crocodiles andsnakes make life stressful for them.Here, the primary means of becomingan ex-wallaby is death by peat bog or anencounterwith a car bumper.
Last year, theBBCreported that localpolicehadbeen called to traffic accidents involving the crea-tures eight times since 2013, including one inci-dent in which a couple were so taken by surprisethat they swerved into awall.
‘This lot have probably adapted over the last 50years, given it’s colder here. Thicker fur maybe,’Dog says, before distracting himself with anorchid. ‘Nobody even knows howmany there are,but I’ve seen a lot of blind ones, which could be aby-product of inbreeding. It might also explain
They’re o
From top John Callister, aka Dog, an expert on Manxflora and fauna – wallabies included – in BallaughCurragh; a wallaby suns itself there last monthP
across the UK. And then there’s the bushy-tailed,eight-inch edible dormouse (or glis glis), which isterrorising well-to-do households in the HomeCounties by gnawing through everything andscratchingabout in attics. Theyarebelieved tobedescended fromjust six releasedby the2ndBaronRothschild onhis land inTring in 1902.
In more recent years, the Asian hornet (hugethings accidentally shipped to France in 2004),Chinese mitten crab (with enormous claws cov-ered in fluffy hair, like theworld’smost repulsivecheerleader), signal crayfish, box tree moth andkiller shrimp (a large and aggressive crustacean,hitchhiked on the kit of fishermen and canoeists)have all either been spotted or have alreadyarrived and outmuscled our native species, too.
If youseeanyof thosecreatures, and indeedanynon-native species, youareurged to recorddetailsfor the GB Invasive Non-Native Species Secretar-iat,whichwas established in 2008 to keep track ofinvaders. Especially important, they say, are anysightingsof thefive ‘alert species’: the invasivegar-den ant, the Asian hornet, the carpet sea squirt,quagga mussels, and the killer shrimp. Location,photo, description: you knowwhat to do.
I f there’s a commonality between how non-native species arrive, it’s human complacencyrather than animal endeavour. Humans didn’t
secure Wanda’s enclosure on the Isle of Man,humans thought grey squirrels would look niceup horse chestnut trees, humans caused thedemand for mink coats. And humans, of course,arewarming the climate.
‘The routes in are called “pathways”, and it’spretty rare to know for sure where somethingcame from – like the wallabies – usually it’s morethan theoneestablishedstory,’ saysEatherley,whovisited Tring for his book and found the glis glishad even invaded themuseum there. ‘There are alot of euphemisms in this topic too. Like “control”.’
‘Control’, it seems,means kill, while a ‘project’means a concerted effort to kill. ‘It’s very hard tostamp anything out fully. There’s a paradoxinvolvedmeaning it costs more andmoremoneyto get the last few of something – until you’rehunting for just one and spending loads on it.’
Perhaps themost extremecaseof an individualcausing chaos came in North America in 1890,whenoneEugeneSchieffelindecided itwouldbea great idea to introduce all the birds mentionedin the works ofWilliam Shakespeare. On a chillywinter’s day he released 60 starlings in NewYork’s Central Park, and then some more a fewmonths later. To the detriment of a lot of nativebirds, there are nowmore than 200million.
‘These animals really wouldn’t be invasive atall if it weren’t for us humans, and trade hasalways played a very big part in introducing for-eign species, be that black rats on ships ormarinelarvaecontained inships’ ballastwater, soconser-vationists are slightly up against free trade,’ Eath-erley says. Using cargo on boats, planes and lor-ries as a means of travel for small species is notsomething that can easily be stopped, especiallyin an increasingly connectedworld.
Nor can we discount the continued idiocy ofhumans, of course.We don’t have eccentric Vic-torian gardeners any more, but people still buyexoticpets andrelease themthoughtlessly.Oneofthe most notorious invasive species in Florida isthe northern snakehead fish, aka the ‘Franken-fish’. Native to the Far East but dumped in riversby tropical-fishenthusiastswhobought themandregretted it, it is fast, toughandcankillmost native fish, swiftly conqueringwhatever body of freshwater it’sreleased in. It can grow to more thanthree feet, has been known to eat ratsand waterfowl and can even ‘walk’,manoeuvring itself with its pectoralfins and surviving out of water for upto threedays.Anyway, they’rebannedin the UK, but its cousin, the giantsnakehead,was recently yours for lessthan£70on tropicalfishfinder.co.uk.
Which brings us to the third category: thosenot established yet. Which species should weworry about? Eatherley needs no thinking time.‘Oh, from a human point of view, definitely tigermosquitoes; if they come here, they could carrysome very nasty diseases with them,’ he says.‘There is a theory that they’removing intoEuropeby the transportation of old tyres, which alwayshave a small pool of stagnant water in them per-fect for hosting their eggs.’
It’s food for thought, but so is the question thatlooms over the whole subject: when does a non-native species shed its outsider status? After all,pheasants andchickens are technicallyAsian.Rab-bits are only here because the Romans broughtthem as a snack. Sheep are from Anatolia. CanadaGeese, well you know about them. In fact, if onlytruly ‘native’ animals were allowed in the BritishIsles, there wouldn’t be half as much action in ourfields and hedgerows. It’s a little like how NigelFarage has built a career on being ‘British’, but is
descended from French Huguenot refugees andGerman immigrants. Political metaphors are very,very easy.
‘Ah, well that’s always the big philosophicaldebate,’ Eatherley says, when I ask if there’s apoint at which a species can ever assimilate fully.‘It all depends how far you go back. In the last IceAge there didn’t tend to bemanymammals here,
apart from the odd reindeer andthings that wouldn’t survive now, soit’s a bit arbitrary what’s decided asnative or non-native.
‘The rabbits are an interesting one,because they were definitely intro-duced here, but 99 per cent of themgot wiped out by myxomatosis in the1950s. As a result, a lot of native ani-mals thathadcome to relyon themforfood – like buzzards, red kites, foxes –
declined, thenwhen rabbits camebacktheywere seen as beneficial. Sheep are definitelyinvasive, too, but now the areas they have over-grazed are flourishing ecosystems in their ownway. The story can change.’
In theCurragh, the sun isdrooping tomeet thebog myrtle and we are nearing the end of ourwander. For two hours, Dog has pointed out thevariety and splendour of the native flora in exact-ing detail, weaving botanical fact into local lore.He’s also stopped the tour briefly in order to dem-onstrate that, at 70, he can still leap over anytrench with a short run-up. And every few min-utes,we’ve bumped into a friendlywallaby.
‘This lot havebeenhere so long, theywouldn’teven knowwhere Australia is,’ Dog says, lookingat one looking at him. He smiles – Dog, that is.‘They probably don’t even have an accent. I betthey soundManx bynow, likeme.’
They didn’t mean to come here, but the Isle ofMan’s newest native is nowpart of the landscape.If only itwere always so simple.
Asian hornetSmaller than our nativehornet, the Asian hornetarrived in France in 2004,where it spread rapidly;there have been 13sightings in the UK. It is nothreat to humans, but is apredator of insects,including honey bees andother beneficial species,and can cause significantlosses to bee colonies.
‘ALERT LIST’ INVADERS: IF YOU SEE THEM, REPORT THEM AT NONNATIVESPECIES.ORG
Quagga musselThe quagga mussel is ahighly invasive freshwatervariety from EasternEurope, which was firstspotted in Britain in 2014in Surrey. It is fast-breeding and suffocatesother mussel species.It can significantly alterwhole ecosystems byfiltering out largequantities of nutrients.
Killer shrimpUp to 3cm in length,these are voraciouspredators that kill a rangeof native species, includingyoung fish, and can havea major impact onecosystems. They werefirst spotted in the UKin 2010, and there areknown establishedinfestations inCambridgeshire andWales.
Invasive garden antNative to south-eastern Europe,Turkeyand Uzbekistan, theinvasive garden antwas discovered inGloucestershire in 2009.It is already a widespreadpest in Europe and formssupercolonies that area nuisance in buildingsand impact on nativeinvertebrates.
