American crayfish are destroying Britain’s footpaths by burying into riverbanks and riddling them with holes “like Swiss cheese”, environmentalists have warned.
Now British Waterways has started a £250,000 project to seal banks with plastic in a bid to stop canal sides from collapsing.
Signal crayfish, which have flourished after being imported from the US and escaping to breed in the wild, are already controversial because they have killed off the bulk of native, much smaller, freshwater crayfish over the last ten years through the spread of disease.
Now they are attacking the earth sides of canals putting footpath users at risk.
David Berezynskyj, senior engineer with British Waterways, said: “We need to act to avoid any serious damage and reduce the risk of the embankment breaching.”
British Waterways, who look after 2,200 miles of the country’s canals and rivers, are weaving sheets of a strong, plastic-like material called polypropylene into the canal banks, which they say is more attractive than using steel supports to keep out the creatures.
The ten-week project will see the canal bank along several sections in Newbury repaired and stabilised to prevent its collapse.
It has been criticised by the Civil Service Angling Society who support the use of crayfish catchers to control numbers.
Stephen Haines makes a living catching the shellfish on the River Kennet and the adjoining Kennet and Avon Canal at Newbury, Berkshire and said he offered his services for free.
A spokesman for the Civil Service Angling Association, which controls fishing rights on a stretch of river and canal at Newbury, said they would continue to allow Mr Haines to trap crayfish.
“We can clearly see that Stephen’s trapping has limited the number of crayfish” said the spokesman.
However, British Waterways claimed otters, endangered water voles and other wildlife are at risk of getting caught in crayfish traps while disease carried by the American species could be spread by the wire cages being lifted from one place and planted in a different stretch of water.
A campaign has been launched to catch and kill the American crayfish and in some places the British species stage a comeback.
On one three-mile stretch of the River Kennet in Berkshire, one of the world’s most famous trout fishing streams, keepers are reported to have caught and removed 20,000 American crayfish in one year.
