A conservation project which aims to save one of Devon's most endangered animals is now urgently seeking donations so it can continue its vital work.

Devon Wildlife Trust are trying to save the freshwater pearl mussel, which are declining significantly across their range.

They have been wild residents of Devon's rivers for thousands of years, but now they are only found on the Torridge and the Taw.

But now even these rivers are too polluted for the mussels to breed successfully and although they can live to 130-years-old, the youngest mussels in the river where born in the 60s.

The trust is working to clean up the river and trying to breed mussels in captivity so they can survive in healthy water at their earliest stage of life, before being returned to the wild.

However, it now needs to fill a £9,000 funding gap in the project and is asking people to help.

Izzy Moser, freshwater pearl mussel officer for the national Restoring Mussel Rivers in England project, has been working with landowners to help improve water quality in the River Torridge for the last two years.

She said: "This winter, we had some great news: the first signs of breeding success for freshwater pearl mussels from the River Torridge in more than 50 years.

“Despite the projects recent successes, there is still a significant amount of work to be done on a catchment scale to reduce run-off from farmland, roads and domestic sources and protect our local waters.

"We have already planted 80 trees and 250 willow stakes this year to reduce riverbank erosion, and fenced 1km of river but there is much more to be done."

The freshwater pearl mussel has an amazing life cycle, which involves a stage of living on the gills of Atlantic salmon or brown trout.

Now the fish, and the larvae, are all in tanks in a hatchery in north Devon and once they are big enough the larvae will drop off the fish, down to the gravel bed of the tanks and then grow to become juvenile mussels.

Then the juveniles have a growth spurt, growing approximately 200 per cent bigger in their first year.

At this stage Izzy will move the juvenile mussels from their gravel habitat in the tanks, to specially selected points of the Torridge riverbed, and then monitor these sites to check on their progress.

Although the project is largely funded by Biffa Award, Devon Wildlife Trust has to find a further £9,000 to cover the costs of this critical work over the coming months.

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For more information please visit devonwildlifetrust.org/freshwater-pearl-mussel-appeal