Go wild with Chris and join his hunt for exotic animals
Thursday, April 08, 2010, 09:30
This is Leicestershire
A hunt is on to chase up reports of exotic beasts lurking in the British countryside.
Loughborough wildlife enthusiast Chris Mullins wants people to help him investigate countrywide sightings of animals such as wolves and boar.
Animals reported to have been seen in Leicestershire have included the ostrich-like rhea, raccoons, polecats, various snakes and even tarantulas.
Elsewhere in the UK there are flocks of parakeets and colonies of wallabies, while the Kentish docklands are reportedly home to yellow-tailed scorpions.
Chris, 58, wants volunteers to join the hunt and help with his website. He launched BeastWatch UK in 2001 to gather reports of exotic sightings and map them online
The group, which has about 100 members, gets reports of sightings almost daily. By following some of the tip-offs, Chris said he had three sightings of big cats around Whitwick.
However, he is leaving the cats to another organisation – Rutland and Leicestershire Panther Watch Group – and concentrating BeastWatch UK on other species.
He thinks exotic animals have arrived by means such as escaping from private enclosures or being released after changes in the law on ownership.
BeastWatch was a big part of Chris’s life until 2004, when he was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus.
He said: “When I became ill, the upkeep of our website and database began to slide.
“Reports would keep coming in but it became too hard for me to keep up, so I’ve had to watch it slowly roll further downhill.
“Thanks to the help of the medical profession, family and friends, I have now come through the other side and I am determined to get BeastWatch UK up and running as it was.
“For this I need the help of some volunteers.”
He also wants to find a boat owner to help him mount an underwater camera investigation into something big and mysterious lurking in the depths of Stonebow Lake, in Loughborough.
He said: “It could be a pike, but if so, it is a very big pike. There are other exotics which could fit. Snapping turtles are very aggressive creatures.
“They were purchased back in the 1980s by children during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle craze.
“Even though they have no teeth, they can take your finger clean off. These are now all over the waterways in the UK.”
A spokesman for Twycross Zoo said the only case they knew of was reports of a big cat at Hopworth Woods, Tamworth, in Staffordshire.
The spokesman said: “Is it a prank, has someone really seen something, or is it a big moggie or black Labrador? We don’t know because we have never seen anything.”
