Coypu kick up a stink
A good deal has been heard recently about the last of the feral coypu of East Anglia. The 20-year campaign of trapping waged by the Ministry of Agriculture has finally, so we are told, scoured the last of the creatures from their adopted home in the slow-flowing, reed-fringed waterways of eastern England. But rather less is known about the first encounters that the local people had with these undesirable aliens.
Like the mink, the coypu was introduced into Britain by fur farmers. During the 1920s and 1930s, it was successfully reared in substantial numbers to satisfy the demand for nutria, the name given to the coypu’s
