Most of us like squirrels – they are entertaining to watch, fast, dexterous, bushy-tailed, excellent climbers that can be seen scampering around in search of nuts and berries in our towns, parks and woodlands. For many, they are possibly the only wild mammal they have seen. That squirrel would have been grey for most, especially in the south of Britain.
Greys have successfully colonised our urban and country landscapes in the 200 years since they were introduced by the Victorians as a novelty to ‘add interest’ to their country estates.
So why are many of our best-known conservation charities busily campaigning to ‘Save the Reds’?
We hear scary talk of small strongholds of red squirrels courageously ‘holding out’ on small land boundaries and even islands – we are told our ‘native squirrel’ is outcompeted by the non-native (read invasive) greys and is on the verge of extinction.
We’re told the ‘greys’ have driven the native ‘reds’ from their homes by being bigger, faster and carrying a deadly squirrel pox virus.
How strange!
Grey squirrels seem to provoke the strongest of reactions from animal-loving Brits. They have all the characteristics of animals that we tend to love, and yet, they are actively persecuted by our conservation charities. They are often referred to as “Tree Rats” and have recently been added to the invasive species list in England and Wales. This means an injured grey squirrel can no longer be taken to a wildlife rescue for help. If it is, they are required, by law, to euthanise the animal, irrespective of the prognosis. So, let’s look at some of the claims of conservation charities.
“The red squirrel is in trouble and is facing extinction in parts of the UK”.
Deforestation for agriculture, fuel and war caused red squirrels to become extinct in Ireland and South Scotland by the early 18th century and rare in the Scottish Highlands by the early 19th century. Reds were reintroduced to Scotland from England, and in 1793 Scandinavian Reds were brought in to save the species. In 1837, 20,000 imported red squirrels were sold in London – many escaped into the wild.
“The grey squirrel is widely accepted as the main reason for the decline of the red squirrel over the past century”.
Boosted by the reintroduction of foreign Reds and by massive reforestation of conifers, replacing the Broadleaf woodland, red squirrel numbers recovered rapidly and by the late 1800s reached peak numbers – although, at that time, the red squirrels were claimed to be at ‘plague proportions’. Hence, they were slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands as woodland pests who strip bark, steal eggs from birds’ nests and raid gardens. Sounds familiar?
Between 1900 and 1925, red squirrel numbers declined drastically under human persecution, which in Hampshire’s New Forest officially ended only in 1927. A quote about Red squirrels highlights our fickle relationship with squirrels: ‘It invades gardens and will take peas from their pods as cleanly as a man. In spring, it turns carnivorous and eats eggs and young birds. It damages trees by biting bark and preventing the flow of sap.’ Source: Natural History – Animals, by George Jennison, Belle Vue Zoological Gardens curator. Published in 1927.
“Grey squirrels compete with red squirrels for food and shelter”.
There is some truth in this. Both Reds and Greys eat nuts and berries and share the same habitats. In reality, Greys are better adapted to broadleaf woodlands than reds, are more arboreal and are more suited to pine and coniferous plantations.
“Grey squirrels carry the squirrel pox virus and transmit this to red squirrels. Once infected, red squirrels die of starvation or dehydration over 1-2 weeks”.
Okay, ‘squirrel pox’ is a very emotive name, and this statement infers ‘intent’ on behalf of the grey to transmit its ‘deadly disease’ This may be particularly relevant to our everyday experience of Covid -19 which can be shared between people who do not have any symptoms of the virus.
Okay, so the correct term for ‘Squirrel Pox’ is Parapoxvirus. It affects both grey and red squirrels. It is often ‘alleged’ that Greys carry the disease but are immune to the virus – Not true. What is true is that whilst both reds and greys can carry Parapoxvirus, the greys have developed some natural immunity, which the Reds, to date, have not.
The Parapoxvirus is deadly to reds.
Both species suffer the same horrific effects of pox scabs forming, usually around the rear leg and genitals.
This may sound familiar to you right now, as many more of us are aware of the impacts of a virus on a population due to current events. Grey squirrels rarely die from this disease as their population has developed some natural immunity, having been exposed to the virus for many years.
In sharp contrast, no known red squirrels have developed immunity to the virus, and the mortality rate for infected red squirrels in the wild appears to be 100% – most dying within 4–5 days of being infected. Recently, there has been some anecdotal evidence of resistance to squirrel pox in the red population, including finding a healthy red squirrel with antibodies to the virus in Cumbria. However, the mortality rate is still considered severe and capable of local extinction of red squirrels in areas that succumb to the disease.
It is clear from research in the first half of the 20th century that Parapoxvirus was endemic in the red squirrel. A paper by Middleton 1930 indicated clinical symptoms of the disease in red squirrels and further noted that these symptoms were seen in red squirrels, which had not come into contact with grey squirrels. In fact, out of 44 districts where red squirrels were affected between 1900 and 1920, only four had grey squirrels present.
Okay, so it’s clear that Parapoxvirus is an aggressive, fatal disease that is species specific to Squirrels. It is also only recorded in the UK but not throughout Europe, where reds and greys live together in mixed populations. This appears to be a UK-only issue, but no one asks the obvious question, WHY?
Grey squirrels now occupy much of the UK, but conservation management enables red squirrels to survive in some places.
Conservation management is one of those terms that says nothing and means different things to different people. For instance, here it could refer to using birch trees on the edge of a woodland, specifically planted to detract squirrels from the inner broadleaf beech and oaks; or it could mean trapping squirrels, placing them in sacks and bludgeoning them to death. In fact – in the case of many of the current ‘Save the Reds’ campaigns – it means both.
Both red and grey squirrels strip bark, and it can kill the tree. However, it is sporadic from year to year and is nothing to do with food shortages. It is, however, more prevalent where pheasants were being reared for shooting and fed on grain in winter – providing an additional food source for squirrels. You would think that a researcher would be keen to follow up on such a hypothesis, but we have been unable to trace any such ongoing scientific research.
Compared with the destruction of trees by humans, damage from squirrels is insignificant – except for some, primarily aesthetic, flaws in high-value trees grown for more than 100 years of age for top-quality furniture.
Whilst habitat management protects red squirrels, this alone hasn’t been enough to stop their decline, so additional measures are required to save them from extinction.
So conservation management has failed, and for additional measures- please read culling. Culling squirrels has become a British obsession over the last century, and we have come up with many ways of reducing red and grey squirrel populations.
Here is a brief synopsis of our squirrel culling history:
In 1931, The Field magazine launched an ‘Anti-Grey Squirrel Campaign’, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) encouraged the destruction of the species. At that time, around 10,000 square miles of Britain had been colonised. Despite the campaign, the grey’s range doubled during the following six years.
Between 1945 and 1955, County Agriculture Committees set up Grey Squirrel Clubs, which were provided with free shotgun cartridges by MAFF (at taxpayers’ expense). This mass culling failed to prevent grey squirrels from increasing both in numbers and range, and in 1953 the Forestry Commission launched a ‘bounty scheme’, which encouraged the public to capture and kill grey squirrels, cut off their tails and take them to a police station to receive a shilling for each tail.
A 1953 shilling would be worth around £3 today. After three years of this subsidised slaughter, the ‘reward’ for a grey’s tail was doubled and remained at two shillings until the scheme was abandoned in 1957. Over one million squirrels had been killed under the four-year bounty scheme costing taxpayers at least £ 3 million at today’s value. Yet, the grey squirrels were more numerous than ever and covered an extended range, despite all the shooting and trapping.
In 1973, the Forestry Commission, following a highly successful media propaganda campaign that contemptuously labelled grey squirrels as ‘tree-rats’, launched an attempt to persuade the public and Parliament to accept the mass poisoning of grey squirrels using the anticoagulant drug – Warfarin.
The Forestry Commission assured the RSPCA that this poisoning would cause ‘little hazard’ to other woodland animals. There was no evidence of secondary effects on predators such as foxes, stoats and weasels. The anticoagulant poisons have killed thousands of non-target animals – including domestic pets, primarily dogs – and contaminated the entire wildlife food chain.
Anticoagulant poisoning leads to victims dying slowly, over many days, from internal bleeding, described by the government’s Pesticide Safety Directorate as ‘markedly inhumane’. It is particularly cruel for squirrels, with the Forestry Commission admitting that post-mortems of poisoned squirrels revealed that “haemorrhage into joints was common”. This is a painful and horrific way to die.
Scientific evidence shows that control of grey squirrels in some key places where they are in contact with red squirrels is necessary to ultimately prevent the extinction of red squirrels in the UK. Control of grey squirrels is a last resort and is restricted to a few targeted areas.
The Forestry Commission’s anti-grey propaganda campaign, supported by the National Trust, was intended to ‘soften up’ public opinion and MPs. Hence, the government implemented the Grey Squirrel (Warfarin) Order 1973, permitting the poisoning of grey squirrels in England, except for eight counties where red squirrels could be affected. For the same reason, Scotland and Wales were excluded from the mass poisoning.
At the time, the government was following the advice of their department, MAFF (now DEFRA) and land management experts for many decades and had yet to have successful conclusions or outcomes. With this track record, why should we believe the latest statement to support the culling of squirrels?
There is currently no viable alternative solution. There is no available vaccine or contraceptive for grey squirrels. A future contraceptive couldn’t be used in areas where red and grey squirrels overlap, as it would also affect the fertility of red squirrels.
It seems completely illogical to be developing a vaccine for grey squirrels when they have developed a natural immunity to Parapoxvirus. Indeed, we should be getting our Scientists looking at ways to create the same resistance in reds as the priority.
Evidence shows that red squirrel populations thrive in areas where conservation management has been used.
Local extinction of grey squirrels through culling to introduce non-native, captive-bred red squirrels – is that conservation? Grey Squirrels did not ‘invade’ Britain of their own accord – our ancestors introduced them.
Grey squirrels have no control over the parpoxvirus they carry, nor do they intentionally pass it on to reds; Grey squirrels are not guilty – What they have done has become very effective in colonising areas where the reds are no longer present.
Grey squirrels are not predatory to reds – they simply do what they do, which is to be grey squirrels. We introduced them without consideration of the consequences; how can it be right then that our only solution is to kill them by the tens of thousands, year after year, for most of the last century?
Let’s be realistic – Nobody seriously believes the grey squirrel could be exterminated in the UK.
A report by Stephen Harris and colleagues at the University of Bristol concluded that culling greys to save reds is neither viable nor economical. It figured, “We could save ourselves time, money and effort by not persecuting grey squirrels”.
No one wants to see the red squirrel become extinct in Britain, but neither should we accept the culling of grey squirrels in the infinite numbers we will have to kill if current plans continue in perpetuity.
The methods of killing grey squirrels have been horrific, expensive and ineffective. It’s time for us to accept that we will be living with Grey Squirrels and focus our efforts on helping the red squirrel species to develop immunity to the Parapoxvirus.
In Defence of the Grey was written to support the case for further research projects into the Squirrel Parapox virus, rather than the knee-jerk reaction of killing grey squirrels, mainly inhumanely causing slow and painful deaths. There is no benefit to Red Squirrels in the random killing of Grey squirrels in parts of the UK.
Further Reading; Epidemiology of squirrel pox virus in grey squirrels in the UK C M Bruemmer 1, S P Rushton, J Gurnell, P W W Lurz, P Nettleton, A W Sainsbury, J P Duff, J Gilray, C J McInnes
The drivers of squirrel pox virus dynamics in its grey squirrel reservoir Julian Chantrey Timothy Dale David Jones Michael Begon Andy Fenton
Modelling the Spatial Dynamics of Parapoxvirus Disease in Red and Grey Squirrels: A Possible Cause of the Decline in the Red Squirrel in the UK? S. P. Rushton, P. W. W. Lurz, J. Gurnell and R. Fuller
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