friendly squirrel Betsy Siber

Betsy Siber

The importance of conserving both red and grey squirrels goes beyond their adorable fluffiness and acrobatic skills. These creatures play vital roles in our ecosystems. They help in seed dispersal, which promotes healthy forests. However, their populations face significant threats. Understanding their needs and taking action can make a real difference.

Red squirrels are endangered, but this is not just because of grey squirrels carrying squirrelpox virus, as is often reported. In fact, their main risk is lack of pine trees (which is why red squirrels thrive in Northumberland and the Scottish Highlands, where they enjoy their natural habitats).

In a nutshell, red squirrels die of disease due to poor immunity caused by lack of natural habitats (and being fed the wrong food by humans). Whereas grey squirrels eat high-calorie nuts (not peanuts as they carry a mouldy toxin) as their main diet, red squirrels feed more on small seeds from conifer cones.

Due to current laws only protecting red squirrels, experts say it’s kindest to not encourage grey squirrels to feed in your garden (avoid ‘squirrel-proof feeders’ as these clever creatures can get trapped). Also fix roof damage, and block access points where needed.

London charity Urban Squirrels is campaigning to change the law, so grey squirrels can legally be rescued and released. It says that feeding stations to help red squirrels, ironically concentrate small areas for the squirrelpox virus to spread.

Grey squirrels (though some have ginger fur) mostly eat hazelnuts and pine cones, caching food to take back to their ‘drey’ made out of leaves and bark in trees. Red squirrels are smaller with larger ears.

Red squirrels were originally from Scandinavia but have lived in England for thousands of years, and grey squirrels were accidentally released in Victorian times, after being introduced from North America.

Simple Solutions to Help Red Squirrels

woodland red squirrel Claire Tuxworth

Claire Tuxworth

This is quite a similar story to cattle TB and badgers. Knee-jerk reactions to ‘cull badgers’ when cattle-to-cattle vaccination is the simple answer. A report from Bristol University says culling greys won’t work, and there are simple answers to help prevent this awful disease (which grey squirrels are immune to, but red squirrels are not):

Rewild endangered pine martens. Almost hunted to extinction for their fur in Victorian times, pine martens are mostly only still found in northern England and the Scottish Highlands. But in areas of England where they have been rewilded, grey squirrel populations have rapidly gone down, as pine martens are natural predators.

Move red squirrels to some of England’s islands. It would be a small price to pay for us not seeing red squirrels in our parks. But until squirrelpox vaccinations were underway, this would enable red squirrels to be safe and thrive, as there would be no nearby grey squirrels to catch the disease from. This would be a far easier, kinder and cheaper solution that culling all grey squirrels.

Use oral contraceptives to control grey squirrel populations. This is done using a kind of ‘Nutella’ bait to administer medicine, to stop over-population. Already an injectable vaccine has been created (studies are underway to produce an oral version, which of course could be administered instead, preventing the problem at source).

squirrel nation Peter Coates

Read A Scurry of Squirrels. This book by wildlife rehabilitator Polly Pullar looks at how she has created spectacular results in helping to save red squirrels, not through culling grey squirrels but by creating habitats akin to how they live in the wild. Also read Squirrel Nation by environmental professor Peter Coates.

Local wildlife rescue shelters are appalled that the recent Invasive Alien Species laws (which also affects muntjac deer) means it’s not legal to release any rehabilitated rescues of either species (some still do rescue them but then have to keep them in captivity for life).

All squirrel experts now say the kindest thing to do is simply discourage grey squirrels from feeding in your garden (try not to use squirrel-proof feeders as they are clever creatures that can get trapped) and fix roof damage and block access points where needed.

Urban Squirrels (London) is campaigning to change the law, so that grey squirrels can legally be rescued and released. Their site addresses common myths like greys spreading the pox virus.

In fact, feeding stations to help red squirrels are concentrating an area for the virus to easily spread). This damaged forests, as squirrels strip bark which actually creates food like insects for birds to eat. It’s the commercial forestry world that don’t want squirrels living in trees.

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