White Clawed Crayfish Assessment

December 2021

With funding from the Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership, this project aims to determine whether White Clawed Crayfish (a rare and protected species) are still present in the Tebay/ Orton area of our catchment. Initially we have taken water samples from a number of becks in the area and sent them to a specialist laboratory for environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis. This process can detect the presence of species, such as crayfish, from very small amounts of DNA that they shed into the water. This has confirmed that White Clawed Crayfish are present in a small number of becks in the Tebay/ Orton area. We are hoping that we can secure follow-on funding to enable us to do more detailed assessments in 2022.