{"id":797587,"date":"2026-10-10T01:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T01:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/797587\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T01:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T01:20:14","slug":"wallington-red-squirrel-sightings-increase-after-storm-arwen-setback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/797587\/","title":{"rendered":"Wallington red squirrel sightings increase after Storm Arwen setback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sightings of red squirrels have more than doubled on an estate, five years after their habitats were destroyed in Storm Arwen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The population at Wallington, near Morpeth, took a hit during the 2021 storm, with sightings rare for a number of years after.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But rangers have recorded 37 individual sightings on the Northumberland estate so far in 2026, compared to just 16 for the whole of 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lead ranger, Helen McDonald, said the success has been possible due to increased grey squirrel control as well as managing the woodland on site.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McDonald said the grey squirrel population began to thrive after Storm Arwen because they can survive in a &#8220;more diverse range of woodland&#8221;, so the team had to focus on controlling their numbers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The team has removed 225 non-native grey squirrels this year, compared to 170 by this time last year, which McDonald said was contributing to the red squirrels&#8217; success.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Sadly it&#8217;s the only way, there&#8217;s no way of catching and relocating grey squirrels, that&#8217;s against the law,&#8221; McDonald said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sightings of red squirrels have more than doubled on an estate, five years after their habitats were destroyed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":797588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-797587","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\/797587","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=797587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}