BBC Rewind: Saving our rarest and largest fen spider

The start of a rescue operation to save Britain's rarest and largest spider featured in a BBC TV report from 1991.

BBC Rewind footage shows how £30,000 was to be spent to boost the population of great raft, or fen raft, spiders.

The large, dark brown species lives around the edge of ponds and ditches and is still listed as vulnerable today.

It has only been identified at three sites in the UK; near Swansea, in East Sussex and at Redgrave and Lopham Fen on the Suffolk-Norfolk border, where this news report was filmed.

20 August 2023