UK’s biggest rat-sized fen raft spiders make a comeback

Fen raft spiders used to live in lots of wetland habitats – which means places that they called home, including marshes, swamps and bogs – in the Yare Valley hundreds of years ago.

Their numbers decreased as wet landscapes disappeared around the area.

Speaking for the RSPB, the Yare Valley reserves manager Tim Strudwick said that these areas are still threatened, “from things such as drought, sea level rise, tidal surges – anything like that could literally wipe [the spiders] out”.

So in 2010, the British Arachnological Society, Natural England, the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the University of East Anglia all teamed up to try and bring the fen raft spider back.