It was a good place to be a crayfish: Ensor's Pool, Nuneaton
Introduction
The photograph on this page of It was a good place to be a crayfish: Ensor's Pool, Nuneaton by A J Paxton as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
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Image: © A J Paxton Taken: 15 Sep 2021
In particular, it was a good place to be Austropotamobius pallipes, a white-clawed crayfish, a European species which is the only crayfish native to Britain & Ireland. Once common, it has declined greatly owing to pollution and to competition from non-native crayfish species which have been introduced and which carry the fungus which causes crayfish plague, to which the white-clawed crayfish has no resistance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austropotamobius_pallipes Ensor's Pool is an abandoned clay pit with an area of just under 3.8 hectares and an average depth of 8m; it is fed by ground water. See the Natural England site at publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/5364843502632960 . It was a notable site for white-clawed crayfish and as such was declared a Special Area of Conservation under the Habitats Directive of the European Union. Alas, surveys in 2014 and 2015 found no crayfish, and they are presumed to have vanished from the pool. White-clawed crayfish survive in other parts of the county; see this plan by the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust https://www.warwickshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/2019-03/Whiteclawedcrayfish_May%202017_1.pdf
Image Location
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