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Beetle trouble
17:20:54 05/10/2007
Rare insect hit by housing scheme
Britain’s rarest beetle, the streaked bombardier, could soon become extinct in the UK when a new housing development is built over the single site at which it can be found, a brownfield site on the Thames Estuary in East London.
“It is very sad that a deliberate choice has been made to plough on with the development, regardless of the consequences to wildlife,” said Jamie Roberts of the invertebrate conservation group Buglife.
A last ditch attempt is being made to move the beetles to a specially designed pile of rubble that replicates their existing habitat and which has been constructed adjacent to the new development. But experts stress that there is only a slim chance that the translocation will succeed.
One of the difficulties is the beetle's life cycle – the larvae of bombardiers prey on beetles in the Amara genus, but it is not known precisely which ones. “This is the last chance saloon for the beetle – if nothing is done, the species will be lost anyway,” Roberts said.
Only a handful of streaked bombardier beetles have been found and moved so far, and with time running out before the building work begins, extinction is imminent for a species that was only recently added to the UK's red list of endangered species.
Emma Clark
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