Reintroduction of burbot in the UK

[ajb]

It is generally accepted that the burbot is extinct in UK waters. The last confirmed sighting of a burbot was on September 14, 1969, in the Old West river, Aldreth, Cambridgeshire.

 

Biologists have been, for a few years now looking into the possibility of reintroducing the species. The university of Southampton has a burbot research centre.

 

To my knowledge, there has been many setbacks to the idea, both political and scientific. There has been similar proposals for wolves in Scotland and wild bore have been reintroduced to areas of the UK.

 

What do you think about reintroducing this species? Or more generally what about the reintroduction of other species?

[jackson33]

It is most common in streams and lakes of North America and Europe above 40°N latitude. They are fairly common in Lake Erie but are also found in the other Great Lakes.[/Quote]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burbot

 

Most area of the UK, is probably a little to far south, based on London being 32N and much of the area borderline to their favored breeding conditions. However. I can't imagine a political opposition and other than water temperatures, I can't figure a scientific reason, frankly either direction, for or against.

[Rickdog]

Imho, you must seek for scientific reasons of why should you reintroduce the specie or not within the same area that studies environments and Ecology. In the first place you should know perfectly clear the reasons that lead to the extinction of the specie. If that interrogative, isn´t perfectly clear and you don`t make the adjustments to fix the issue, you could reintroduce the specie and maybe in some years to come it could probably disappear once again. Second you should consider that everytime a given specie disappears from any given habitat, the habitat must make arrangements in it in order to assure the subsistence of it by reaching a new equilibrium, and if you reintroduce the specie after more than 40 years of its original dissapearing, maybe the results in that habitat could be more damaging than the absence of the dissapeared specie, by forcing it to regain a new equilibrium, that is probable that it will not be as it was in the first place. Another very important issue, you don`t really know if the reintroduced specie will have the same behaviour than the specie that originally lived in the habitat, therefore the outcome of the reintroduction of it can be more hazardous to the environment than its lack (it will need another period of adjustment, that the habitat can probably not absorve).

 

Well another point to consider, is that in most experiments done throughout the world with the introduction of a diferent specie from a diferent habitat, the results of it, have been more damaging than the solution expected in the first place with the introduction of the new specie. Examples of this are very numerous, but I think that in the case of Australia, they have had to learn about this "sour drink", with some of their experiments in the area (rabbits, coyotes that were suposed to eat rabbits but prefered eating other species instead, camels who resulted more succesful than the local fauna, and the Brazilian Amazon toad, which not having any natural predators have multiplied its numbers to proportions of a plague, etc.)

 

In the specific case of the American Burbot, I don`t think that it was the same specie as in the Brittish one, since their evolution in time and distance, probably has made them differenciate one from the other, to make two subspecies of it.

 

:-)

Edited January 20, 2010 by Rickdog

[ajb]

There are burbot in other European countries. To me it would make sense to concentrate on these.

 

One question you raise quite correctly is "will they just die out again?".