Flamingo Land and the Yorkshire Crayfish Hatchery have reached a milestone in their "Claws for Thought" project.
The hatchery was created in response to the decline of the white-clawed crayfish, one of the UK’s most endangered freshwater species.
Building on the first stage of the project, which focused on developing husbandry skills through the care of captive-bred crayfish, the team has now progressed to working with wild individuals from North Yorkshire.
Numbers have fallen due to habitat loss, pollution, and the spread of the invasive signal crayfish.
In March 2025, 35 captive-reared crayfish—four adults from Northumberland and 31 yearlings from Wingham Wildlife Park, originally bred at Bristol Zoo—were returned to their place of origin near Bristol and released into the wild.
This marked the first of a series of planned releases.
Following this, the hatchery underwent a full clean to prepare for the next stage: housing wild adult females carrying eggs.
In May, 16 berried (egg-carrying) females and 10 males were collected from an at-risk population in North Yorkshire.
With support from the Environment Agency and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, they were transferred to the hatchery.
This approach allowed the females to hatch their eggs in a controlled environment while also giving the males time to moult and recover before being released into an Ark site within the same river catchment.
The site, discovered and selected by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, provides a secure refuge for native crayfish.
Vanessa Barlow, Crayfish Project Officer at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said:
“Creating ark sites is a vital part of crayfish conservation in the UK, and a key objective of the Yorkshire Crayfish Forum in providing a safe refuge for native crayfish populations.
"We are very hopeful that this programme and this ark site will have huge benefits for Yorkshire’s native white-clawed crayfish population.”
By June, the first eggs began to hatch.
The team monitored the females as they carried their young, which cling to the mother’s underside until they develop the ability to swim independently.
Later that month, both males and females were released into the Ark site, bringing the total number of released crayfish to more than 50 in the hatchery’s first operational year.
Currently, the hatchery is raising around 200 young crayfish.
Over the next 12 to 18 months, they will be monitored to ensure healthy growth and development, with the goal of releasing them in 2026.
In the wild, survival rates to adulthood are typically around five percent, but the team hopes the hatchery will increase that figure significantly.
Kieran Holliday, Science and Conservation Officer at Flamingo Land, added:
“Joining the Yorkshire Crayfish Forum and creating this hatchery has had an enormous impact for us here at Flamingo Land and has really secured our first steps into being a conservation powerhouse.
"These recent steps forward for the hatchery have really started to make this project feel real to the team.
"The keepers have done an exceptional job of caring for the adults and the juveniles are doing well and growing as expected, and we can’t wait for the releases next year.”
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