Yellow-bellied slider

This non-native reptile was taken out of the lake at Fairhaven by a member of the RSPB staff and I hope they managed to find a home for it. 

Judging by its size (its shell was a least  1 foot / 30 cm in length), it must have been in the lake for a long time. I can't imagine that anyone would have been able to keep it as a pet once it started to grow beyond a few inches. Not in an indoor fish tank, that's for sure. 

There are a few of these and similar terrapins / turtles (red-eared sliders) in the lake at Stanley Park, in Blackpool and you can occasionally see them sunbathing on one of the small islands.  

I would like to see a ban on the sale of these wild animals, They are sold as hatchlings and they are not suitable as pets. If  the turtles manage to live through the trauma, people eventually have to discard them and that generally means dumping them in a lake or a river.  As much as I love these reptiles, they don't belong here.