For the past 10 years, experts have been saying that raccoons – medium-sized carnivores native to North and Central America – could establish themselves in the UK.
The warnings have come in ‘horizon-scanning’ exercises carried out by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) in 2013, 2019 and now again in 2025, which predict the non-native species that have the potential to become invasive over the next decade.
Of 145 species in the latest report, raccoons are in the top 20.
Experts say they are doing well in other North European countries, suggesting there are no barriers to them thriving here, and they are held in private collections, providing opportunities for them to escape or be deliberately released.
It’s feared they would become pests in urban areas, impact some birds and displace our native carnivores.
But, so far, there is no sign of raccoons breeding in Britain. Does that suggest the warnings have been unnecessary?
“No, that’s a sign that horizon scanning is working,” says Helen Roy, who led the latest piece of work. “It shows there are contingency plans in place and that people are forewarned. In the case of raccoons, so far every escapee has been put back into captivity.”
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CEH’s latest horizon scan has also identified species not seen in previous reports. It’s alarmed by the presence of pink salmon in rivers in Scotland and England, for example. Pink salmon are native to the North Pacific but are now found in the wild in Scandinavia and the Baltic.
CEH’s freshwater molecular ecologist Lori Lawson Handley says what prompted the inclusion of pink salmon was a research paper indicating that smolts – juvenile fish – had been discovered in the Rivers Thurso and Oykel in northern Scotland. It was a sign, she explains, they could be successfully breeding.
Pink salmon could have devastating impacts on our native Atlantic species, adds Lawson Handley, which has declined by 70 per cent in the past 25 years. There are also concerns about a parasitic liver fluke that has caused mass mortality in wild and farmed Atlantic salmon in Norway reaching our shores.
Other species raised as potentially invasive include a nematode that infects pine trees, a marine filter-feeding invertebrate that can smother seagrass and two species of freshwater clam that can have deleterious impacts on water industry infrastructure and river ecology.
Research suggests non-native invasive species cost the UK economy more than £4 billion a year. One of the most costly arrivals has been ash dieback, a fungus of Asian origin that is predicted to kill 80 per cent of our ash trees, changing our landscape forever and costing a total of £15 billion.
Main image: raccoon in a forest. Credit: Getty
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