What about the mink?

ONE of the by-products of living on a narrowboat long term is that you notice trends. Whether that is in terms of boat numbers, mooring patterns, or indeed wildlife populations you can't help but notice year-on-year changes. Regular readers will know I've written about the former on several occasions but not the latter, writes Ralph Freeman.

One of the sad things that is becoming more common, is to moor up at a familiar spot, most likely in my case 'in the sticks', open the side doors facing the canal and have a look around. Increasingly I'm spotting little in the way of waterfowl. Ducks, coots, and moorhens are the most common and often, on seeing the side doors open, they swim up and hang about hoping for scraps. Or they used to!

Numbers dwindling?

Over the last two or three years I've noticed a sharp decline in this sort of occurrence and I think I know why. Mink! Because I tend to move early in the morning when it's quiet, if I keep my eyes open and the engine revs low, I see all sort of creatures going about their business undisturbed. Increasingly though, this has included mink. They are becoming more bold and make no attempt to hide as I cruise past. I bet it's no coincidence that where I see them, I see the wildfowl 'disappear' from the Cut over the next year or so. Perhaps mink clear the area of prey and then just move on down the Cut?

Mink trapping

So my suggestion is this, forget about re-introducing Water Voles etc as it's more than likely you are just feeding the mink! Instead I would like to see a coordinated nationwide program involving all the CaRT regions to eradicate mink from our waterways. So instead of coming up with floating islands and other such nonsense I would like to see those resources re-directed into doing something more useful, i.e. mink trapping! As far as I am aware they have no natural predators so there is only man to prevent their numbers multiplying out of hand. (The picture is of a mink on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.)

I wonder if CaRT, or any of the associated wildlife agencies that claim to be protecting the wildlife on our waterways, have any data on the mink population in the vicinity of our canals or indeed any data on how many are trapped each year. I suspect the latter figure is zero! Perhaps we could have mink traps instead of floating islands? Just a suggestion! (The picture is of a mink on a narrowboat in Birmingham.)