It shouldn’t come as a surprise to see a mink anywhere in the UK given the number of years that they have lived here writes Julia Jacs.
Nor should the blame for their deeds always point only at the ‘do-gooders’ who let them loose years ago, how about blaming the farmers who imported the non-native creatures for profit, and kept them in high numbers and extremely cruel conditions—and did not have the sense to keep them secure? And maybe also blame the government that allowed this?
A mink ‘spotted poking its head out of its burrow’ is likely poking it’s head out of someone else’s burrow, because the endangered water-vole digs burrows in canal-banks too, and the mink would go in there looking for a meal, however—it’s seems highly unlikely to me that either of these culprits could burrow into the steel pilings of the Bridgewater Canal in the area of the breach—as is implied.
The statements ‘it is told’ and ‘it was suggested’ are simply misleading and unhelpful.
I lived near a mink farm in Lancashire over 60 years ago and the mink were escaped and free and breeding in those days (and of course blamed for spoiling the grouse-shooters sport). Nothing to do with ‘do-gooders’ they escaped on their own.