\n I only glimpsed it for a few moments as it bounded across the road in front of me, scrambled up the trunk of the nearest tree, and disappeared out of sight amongst the dense foliage.\n<\/p>\n
\n This fleeting image was nevertheless a joy to witness, being the first time I had seen this striking creature in its natural habitat for thirty-five years.\n<\/p>\n
\n Until the early ‘seventies, the red squirrel had been a common sight in the woods around the Norfolk village where I grew up.\n<\/p>\n
\n Red Squirrels (Image: C.F.Tunnicliffe)\n<\/p>\n
\n They had at one time not been infrequent visitors to our own garden, probably attracted by a particularly fine specimen of oak that grew near our front gate.\n<\/p>\n
\n I remember one of my childhood friends picking up a dead specimen by the roadside while walking to school and depositing it with pride upon the nature table.\n<\/p>\n
\n Unlike our headmaster, we children were deeply impressed.\n<\/p>\n
\n This was the first opportunity most of us had ever had to observe a red squirrel at close quarters and admire its silky chestnut fur, busy tail, and tufted ears.\n<\/p>\n
\n Most of us found it difficult to resist touching and stroking this beautiful animal, and as a brief addition to our nature table it certainly made my half a dozen pigeon feathers and tatty blackbird’s nest look extremely ordinary.\n<\/p>\n
\n Back then it was not uncommon to find a red squirrel’s drey high up in the evergreen canopy of any local conifer wood.\n<\/p>\n
\n Built of leafless twigs and strips of bark and lined with moss and grass, a litter of three or four kittens was usually raised in early spring and perhaps a second litter in late summer if the food supply was plentiful.\n<\/p>\n
\n By character the red is usually more shy and retiring than its cousin and has therefore always been more difficult to observe.\n<\/p>\n
\n The grey squirrel is by far the more sociable of the two, and displays no anxiety in living close to human habitation.\n<\/p>\n
\n In fact, the reverse is invariably true, where it readily takes advantage of the situation by stealing from dustbins and food scraps left upon the bird table.\n<\/p>\n
\n The grey can be easily trained to take food from the hand, but by encouraging the grey into the garden it is best to be warned that it can become as much of a pest as a pet.\n<\/p>\n
\n Nowadays, in East Anglia, the range of the red squirrel is reduced to a handful of sites in Norfolk such as Kelling Heath Holiday Park, the Sandringham Estate and Foxley Wood.\n<\/p>\n
\n Elsewhere throughout the UK, the majority of the population is confined to isolated pockets in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Cumbria, Northumbria and the Isle of Wight.\n<\/p>\n
\n Although the grey squirrel was originally introduced to England from North America in the 1870s, it did not become firmly established until the ‘thirties following deliberate and accidental releases from a number of breeding centres including most notably London Zoo and Woburn Park.\n<\/p>\n
\n Red Squirrel (Image: Archibald Thorburn)\n<\/p>\n
\n It was not until the 1940s that any appreciable decline in the red species was first observed.\n<\/p>\n
\n For the red squirrel, loss of habitat has played a deciding part, as well as its inability to compete with the grey for food.\n<\/p>\n
\n Whereas reds live on a diet of mostly pine cone, acorns and the seed of other trees as well as buds, shoots, bark, flowers, berries and fungi, greys are far more adaptable and can vary their diet according to their surroundings.\n<\/p>\n
\n This inbuilt tenacity allows greys to live in closer proximity to each other than reds: one hectare can support eight greys where only one red could survive.\n<\/p>\n
\n Reds prefer conifer woods and rarely inhabit deciduous woods, though greys will frequent both and are just as at home in hedgerows, parkland, gardens or habitats with few or no large trees at all.\n<\/p>\n
\n But, according to some experts, the most significant factor in the reds’ decline has been the introduction of the parapoxvirus.\n<\/p>\n
\n This disease, carried by the grey who is immune, infects the red, causing skin ulcers, lesions and scabs to form around the eyes, mouth, feet and genitalia.\n<\/p>\n
\n The symptoms are similar to those found in rabbits suffering from myxomatosis.\n<\/p>\n
\n Though some rabbits have been known to build up an immunity to myxomatosis, it is not yet known if the red squirrel can build up the same immunity to the parapoxvirus.\n<\/p>\n
\n Although it is known that some greys carry antibodies, no antidote has yet been developed, and once infected, red squirrel colonies can be wiped out within a matter of weeks.\n<\/p>\n
\n Recent surveys estimate the red population in the UK at around 140,000, whilst that of the grey is around 2.7 million.\n<\/p>\n
\n Armed with these statistics, and mindful of its decline since the war, it is easy to draw the conclusion that the red squirrel is facing extinction within the next twenty years if not sooner.\n<\/p>\n
\n Since the 1960s, the Ministry of Agriculture has instigated repeated campaigns to exterminate the grey by shooting, trapping and poisoning with virtually no noticeable success.\n<\/p>\n
\n Greys do immense damage to trees, especially in early summer when they attack the main stems to reach the sapwood beneath, often ringing the trunk of a young sapling and killing the tree in the process.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bird life also suffers where greys predominate; raiding nests and bird boxes alike, they can wreak untold devastation.\n<\/p>\n
\n Though managed by that exemplary organisation the Woodland Trust, the small carr close to my own home is overrun by greys to the detriment of almost all bird life within the vicinity.\n<\/p>\n
\n The intrusive and destructive nature of the grey squirrel has led many to regard it as vermin, and it is frequently referred to as a tree-rat among its detractors.\n<\/p>\n
\n Whilst I am not inclined to be quite so damning, I do see the necessity to severely curtail its numbers in an effort to restore the balance.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the past, the government has sanctioned a massive cull to be jointly organised by the Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Forestry Commission, and this has to be seen as a step in the right direction.\n<\/p>\n
\n Failure to act now or in the immediate future could have far-reaching consequences for several other species of wildlife besides the red squirrel, whose fate is almost assuredly sealed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I only glimpsed it for a few moments as it bounded across the road in front of me,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-599727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}