SubscribeUnder threat – but what can we do?
by Darren
Another red squirrel from the population at Formby, sadly decimated in the last couple of years. They are beautiful creatures.
It’s always a subject that carries great emotion. The greys are not originally native to the UK. Yet they’ve been here over 100 years and are now the dominant population. Unfortunately they are carriers of, but not victims of, squirrelpox so when they come into contact with reds they transmit the disease. There’s no cure, the reds die.
There are active programmes to kill greys in the name of protecting reds, and until just last year it was illegal to release a trapped one into the wild. If you found one in your bird feeder or loft that couldn’t escape, you were legally obliged to kill it. Stories abound of people who advise putting them into a hessian sack and hitting it with stones, or other gruesome ways to take a life. It’s still illegal to release them without a license, typically held by wildlife rescue organisations like Wildlife Aid in Leatherhead.
They’re here, and unfortunately the decision made all that time ago is wreaking havoc, but there is no way of reversing it and it’s a losing battle. One that is full of hatred and a fair bit of self interest (people don’t like greys because they take food intended for birds and they dig up gardens).
I’d be interested to have your thoughts in the comments. What should we do? I’ve included below links to pictures of all the squirrels I’ve posted. Have a look at them and tell me, is one species more beautiful than the other? Does one have more right to occupy our islands? What should we do about the problem?
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4 Responses to “Under threat – but what can we do?”
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Things like this anger me. Not the post I mean! People thinking they have some sort of right to kill species of animals because they don’t like what they do angers me. We kill foxes because they eat our farm animals, rabbits because there’s too many of them, moles because they make mole hills, badgers because they might spread disease …
We’re just another destructive species on this planet, what gives us the right?
OK, so a species is introduced to the island and it overruns it and kills other animals… I’m talking about humans, of course!
Why do we have this thing about wanting to kill things all the time and bend nature to our will? They’re here – let them be. If we can do something to protect the reds, then great – let’s help them be too. But maybe if we stopped killing things for a few minutes, that’d be nice too.
J x
Well, one is for sure – killing is not the solution. We should think about catching and moving them from one place to another but not killing, it’s hypocrisy.
Moving them is a good idea Lucy and one which I’d wholeheartedly support. The problem is where to put them – there seems to be resistance to greys even in the South of England where there aren’t any reds so moving them to these areas would meet opposition.
James, I am sure, is aware of the situation in law where no-one has done anything wrong, or both parties are equally at fault, yet the law has to rule in favour of one or the other. There’s a specific concept but I can’t remember the name of it.
Anyway, that’s the problem we have here. We have to either leave alone in which case the reds will die, exterminate greys, or move greys which will probably increase persecution of them in other areas.
Even though we humans created the problem, I think it’s so far in the past and so well developed that we have no chance of resolving it. Personally I’m in favour of letting nature sort out the issue as it’s much more powerful than we could ever be. We have to devote our collective energies to not making these mistakes again.