Raccoon dog poses serious threat to our native wildlife
IN my line of work the questions come thick and fast: How do I build an owl box? What colour is a golden eagle’s egg? How many badgers have you seen at one time in the same place?
Forty years I’ve been asked and answered these questions to the best of my ability but today, a famous first: ‘Could I have seen a raccoon dog on the road to Hayfield?’
Before answering, a little background information. The raccoon dog has only ever come up twice in conversation in the past ten years, once in 2008 when my daughter Niamh, then only eight years old, recognised and named the creature in a Finnish mammal book while we were in Lapland (and I’m still amazed by that), and secondly three years ago while I was tracking wolves in Belarus and my contact over there tried to catch me out by asking me to identify a raccoon dog skin. As for the latest enquiry I asked my friends at the Mammal Society and you might be surprised with the information.
The raccoon dog is a little-known character on Britain’s growing list of non-native invasive species. Currently it is legal to purchase and import this non-native relative of the fox into the UK, and there appears to be a fashion to buy and keep this animal as a novel pet.
Unsuspecting owners subsequently find them to be difficult to manage and are thought to be releasing them into the countryside. Here they prey on native species and are potential vectors for disease such as rabies or novel parasites. Organisations such as the RSPCA also have concerns for the welfare of these animals as they believe that they do not make good pets, still being essentially wild animals.
The exact distribution of this mammal in Britain and Ireland is not fully-known, but in other European countries it is breeding in the wild and there are concerns that the same is likely to happen here. Raccoon dogs have a similar reproductive cycle to foxes and are likely to breed once a year, with an average of five to seven in a litter. The raccoon dog, also known as the tanuki, is native to Japan, Siberia and China. Their sale as pets is due to be banned in February 2019 under European legislation but the Mammal Society is calling for sales to stop immediately in the UK.
There is concern that breeders in the UK are actively promoting and selling them as pets and this could mean a large number released in the next few years into the countryside.
Unintended or misguided releases could have serious impact on our native flora and fauna. Species such as snapper turtles, terrapins, wallabies and raccoons (not related to raccoon dogs) have been appearing across the country, presumably because they, like raccoon dogs, make very unsuitable pets and are simply dumped into the countryside by their owners.
Si, it seems the answer to the question is a big fat ‘yes’, both raccoon dogs and raccoons could be climbing a drystone wall near you soon.
Fiona Mathews, chair of the Mammal Society and Professor of Environmental Biology at the University of Sussex says: “Raccoon dogs pose a serious threat to our native wildlife and it is important that action is taken now to ensure that they do not spread across the UK. These animals can breed quickly and we want to avoid the problems being caused elsewhere in Europe. We urge the British public not to buy one and risk having to deal with a difficult and unsuitable pet in their home.”
Sightings of raccoon dogs should be reported to the GB Non-Native Species Secretariat (NNSS) (www.nonnativespecies. org) and can also be submitted to Irecord via the free app or the website: www.brc.ac.uk/irecord