American INVADERS!

Escaping from fur factories in the 1950s, mink flourished in the countryside and began devastating native species. Now conservationists in East Anglia are finally turning the tide on the...

- James Fair

Two years ago, Tony Martin was sent a photo by one of the volunteers at the charity he chairs, the Waterlife Recovery Trust (WRT). "It was a cracker," Tony says over Zoom from his home in Cambridgeshire.

"It's a juvenile mink with balls for brains, and he's grabbing the neck of an adult heron." A male mink typically measures less than 65cm long, including tail, and weighs 1-1.5kg- quite a lot smaller than an otter and bigger than a stoat.

A heron stands up to one-metre tall and has a long, dagger-like beak.

"Apparently," Tony adds with a certain amount of relish, "both survived the encounter." Tony's admiration for this small but undoubtedly fierce mustelid is almost unquenchable, so it seems strange that he should be the leading player in the first sustained and comprehensive attempt to eradicate the species from Great Britain.

Tony and colleagues and volunteers from the trust have so far entirely cleared Norfolk, Suffolk, East Cambridgeshire and parts of Lincolnshire of mink, almost 10% of the land area of England. It is already the largest pest-mammal eradication project ever attempted, and should the campaign succeed in making England, Scotland and Wales entirely mink-free, it would dwarf any other project in almost unfathomable proportions.

In a previous life, Tony Martin was the driving force behind eliminating non-native rats and mice from the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, 3,500km² of admittedly rugged, mountainous terrain. East Anglia alone is 12,500km².

But why get rid of them? What's the problem? The answer is that mink aren't native to the UK, having been brought over from North America for fur farming. Following deliberate releases and accidental escapes, mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, mink have had a catastrophic impact on native wildlife. One species - the water vole has suffered more than most, declining by as much as 98% in just over half a century.