ESSEX: It's a mountain of a job for mole catchers

DESPISED by gardeners and farmers nationwide, one breed of pesky critter is booming.

With an estimated 33 million of them in the UK, one small but dedicated band of traditional catchers has been left with a mountain of a job – not a molehill!

Whilst the recession has brought once thriving industries and retail giants to their knees, leaving thousands of people redundant in its wake, one ancient yet dying profession, the humble mole catcher, is enjoying a surge in demand.

Essex mole guru Andy Turner, 36, joined the trade when he spotted a niche in the market for traditional catchers – those who use tried-and-tested booby traps instead of poisons and gasses.

And so he quit his job of seven years, running an internet and telecommunications company with his brother, and ventured into the romantic art of mole catching.

"I stumbled into it really – it was quite funny. After we sold the company I spent about six months just doing odds and sods," he said.

"I hunt rabbits and pigeons for a hobby and I ended up doing some pest control for local farmers so I decided to get all the necessary qualifications and courses.

"I started looking on the web and came across the traditional mole catching idea and there was no one catering for that section of the market in the whole of the south east!"

He quickly set up a website, got it listed on Google and the phone started ringing – without any advertising either.

"It just snowballed and I haven't got the time to do all the work that's out there," he said.

"There's only around 20 traditional mole catchers in the country."

There are many suggestions as to why the mole population is soaring so rapidly, including climate change, resulting in milder winters and better conditions for moles, and the EU banning a 60-year practice of using strychnine.

The deadly poison was banned on health grounds meaning the only control methods left are trapping and gassing.

But mole man Andy is an ardent supporter of the traditional trapping methods, which he believes are more efficient and, more importantly, humane.

The married dad-of-two said: "Moles are clever creatures. They can dig 40 to 100 feet of tunnels a day and you'd literally need a JCB to keep up with them, so we need to control them using the most humane methods available.

"Traditional mole catching is a vanishing art and in a nutshell there just aren't enough professionals, which is why business and the mole population is booming."

Andy has also been contacted by the groundsman at Brentwood School who needs help tackling the pests.

Paul Martin, 36, of Stock, called in the professionals after the pests left his garden littered with unsightly earthy mounds.

The married dad-of-one said: "We've been here for two-and-a-half years and it's always been a problem, but in the last four months it's as bad as it's ever been."

The insurance consultant even took to laying gas pellets himself and lying in wait for one of the pesky critters to show above ground, but decided to call in Andy when the garden became too muddy for his one-year-old son to play.

"It's a visual problem and it makes the lawn look ugly but where the moles make mounds and tunnels it does make the earth very soft and you find yourself in a situation where you're walking on the lawn and sinking at the same time," he said.

"I've got a young son running about in the garden, but the molehills make it very uneven and you could quite easily twist an ankle."