Question: Why do you want to help pearl mussels and not any other animals?

Karen answered on 7 Nov 2018:

Hi that’s a great question 🙂 The reason I work with the freshwater pearl mussel at the moment is that they are “critically endangered” which means the mussel is at risk of dying out completely. My job was created as part of KerryLIFE, which is a group that are trying to make things better for the mussel so it doesn’t die out! Another reason is that the freshwater pearl mussel is really affected by river pollution. If I can help the freshwater pearl mussel by making the river cleaner, it will actually benefit a lot of other creatures that live in rivers, like salmon and trout, river insects and otters. It would also mean more clean drinking water for humans! So by helping the freshwater pearl mussel I hope that I can help a lot of other animals too! I hope that in the future I can work with other animals too, I really like bats and hedgehogs 🙂