Hi there
What do you think of this article from on of the local newspapers today?
I am interested in peoples point of view here?
Grey Squirrels:
Ah, aren't they pretty" - that is one of the most popular phrases used by young children and old ladies as they watch grey squirrels in the park on a Sunday afternoon.
Well their reaction is understandable; grey squirrels with their dark oval eyes and bushy tails are certainly "pretty", but to my mind they would be far prettier if they were still confined to North America where they came from in the first place.
When the grey squirrel was introduced to this country by misguided animal lovers in 1876, it was thought to be a welcome addition to British fauna.
In truth it has been a disaster. Not simply because the grey squirrel devours birds' eggs, steals bird food, eats the bulbs in our gardens, ruins our lawns and damages the trees we love, but also because it has driven our indigenous red squirrel - the original Squirrel Nutkin, which is far prettier and much less aggressive than the grey - to the brink of extinction.
So out of hand is the situation that the Department For Environment, Food And Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has come up with a solution. With the help of scientists in the Forestry Commission and the U.S. it wants to develop an oral contraceptive for grey squirrels - to stop the present five million grey squirrels becoming ten million in five years' time.
The problem is that DEFRA will not get its scheme into operation for at least five years and by then it could be too late, because the red squirrel, now mainly holed up in small woodlands in Northern England and Scotland as its American cousin runs riot, could already be extinct.
But even if we ignore this important time lag, the notion of giving oral contraceptives to squirrels is absolutely dotty. The intention is to mix a contraceptive chemical into food for grey squirrels. What about other wildlife and what about those squirrels rejecting the food?
A feature of squirrels is that they collect and store food in caches for later use. What happens when grey squirrels store the drugged up food and other birds and animals find the food store?
No, the idea of contraceptives for squirrels is not only ridiculously expensive, it is a nonstarter. Which means we are left with the only real solution: a nationwide cull in which squirrels are shot.
I understand why many animal lovers will resist this apparently drastic answer. DEFRA itself - the organisation that happily insisted on the needless slaughter of seven million sheep, cattle and pigs during the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak - dares not suggest a cull in case it is accused by the welfare lobby of inhumanity.
But I'm sorry to say that logic - and the plight of the red squirrel - dictates that robust measures are the only option. We have to accept that culling is sometimes called for in conservation.
The trouble is that where animals and wildlife are concerned, reality has been suspended. In our metropolitan society, all furry animals except rats are sacred whatever damage they might inflict, so none of them can ever be killed. But nature is far more complicated than this.
We are now so divorced from the real world where animals are concerned that, when we buy junk food such as chicken nuggets, we don't pause to think they are made from hens kept and killed in the worst possible conditions.
Our meat from supermarkets is so wrapped and packaged and sanitised that any notion of animal slaughter is removed from it.
And this attitude applies to wildlife, too, promoted and encouraged by animal charities (who often depend on squirrel-loving old ladies for their financial bequests) and the politically correct BBC in its nature documentaries.
On the Springwatch programme, for example, the birdwatching presenter Bill Oddie has advocated feeding grey squirrels with peanuts.
How he squares this with research showing that grey squirrels and their passion for eggs are a major reason for plummeting population levels of birds including the nightingale, songthrush, spotted flycatcher and willow tit, I cannot understand. Perhaps he's more interested in viewing figures than wildlife conservation.
As I say, the answer to the grey squirrel problem is not a fanciful high-falutin' contraceptive, it is far more simple: a proper cull should be organised, not for five years' time, but for tomorrow.
The reasons are clear. Apart from eating the eggs of songbirds and woodland birds, grey squirrels do an enormous amount of damage to growing trees and shrubs, causing million of pounds worth of damage each year. In Dublin's Phoenix Park, they destroyed 80 per cent of the saplings.
The damage to red squirrels is two-fold. The greys chase the reds about aggressively during the breeding season, making them too stressed to breed.
In addition, the greys carry a disease called squirrel poxvirus, which does little harm to themselves, but is extremely contagious and almost always fatal to reds.
In a properly organised cull, the grey squirrels should be trapped, shot and - I know this may offend some animal lovers - preferably eaten.
Squirrels are regularly eaten in the U.S. and it is surely time that Britain's host of celebrity chefs stopped patting each other on the back and did something useful like developing squirrel casserole, baked squirrel, smoked squirrel and squirrel pate.
The meat tastes like a cross between chicken and rabbit and earlier in the year I was given an absolutely delicious squirrel burger. In Shropshire there are already some butchers who sell jointed squirrel, which I have eaten in a casserole - sadly I cannot give names and addresses because of animal rights activists to whom Britain's traditions of free speech seem anathema.
One of the simplest ways of introducing a cull in the countryside would be to use the so-called cross-compliance mechanism on the payment of farm subsidies.
At the moment farmers are required to undertake a number of environmental activities on their farms to qualify for their subsidies.
Grey squirrel control should simply be added to this 'cross compliance' list. In other words, all landowners receiving agricultural subsidies would be required to control the grey squirrels on their land.
At the moment the hard work of saving Britain's last red squirrels is being undertaken by private individuals who understand that wildlife conservation is not simply about being nice to fluffy animals.
On Anglesey, a cull of greys is proving successful. Since 1998 more than 7,500 have been culled and it is hoped final success will come in 2008 and the island's residents reds will be safe. Those involved have shown that a cull is possible and works.
Similarly in the Lake District the battle to save the reds is being fought by private individuals, with help from the holiday village organisation Center Parcs, when DEFRA and the National Trust (which owns 25 per cent of the Lakes) should be leading the way.
Jerry Moss, who has the title of red squirrel ranger at a Center Parcs' refuge for more than 150 healthy wild reds, is quite right when he says: "The people who sit behind desks making decisions simply don't realise how endangered the red squirrel is.
"We need more than volunteers, we need more people like me, only paid for by the Government. Without this, the grey will be out of control and the red squirrel is doomed. There is little time left, the situation is desperate."
So, pretty as they are, please don't feed the grey squirrels as Bill Oddie suggests. These tree rats really are a menace. Regards
Kathy
What do you think of this article from on of the local newspapers today?
I am interested in peoples point of view here?
Grey Squirrels:
Ah, aren't they pretty" - that is one of the most popular phrases used by young children and old ladies as they watch grey squirrels in the park on a Sunday afternoon.
Well their reaction is understandable; grey squirrels with their dark oval eyes and bushy tails are certainly "pretty", but to my mind they would be far prettier if they were still confined to North America where they came from in the first place.
When the grey squirrel was introduced to this country by misguided animal lovers in 1876, it was thought to be a welcome addition to British fauna.
In truth it has been a disaster. Not simply because the grey squirrel devours birds' eggs, steals bird food, eats the bulbs in our gardens, ruins our lawns and damages the trees we love, but also because it has driven our indigenous red squirrel - the original Squirrel Nutkin, which is far prettier and much less aggressive than the grey - to the brink of extinction.
So out of hand is the situation that the Department For Environment, Food And Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has come up with a solution. With the help of scientists in the Forestry Commission and the U.S. it wants to develop an oral contraceptive for grey squirrels - to stop the present five million grey squirrels becoming ten million in five years' time.
The problem is that DEFRA will not get its scheme into operation for at least five years and by then it could be too late, because the red squirrel, now mainly holed up in small woodlands in Northern England and Scotland as its American cousin runs riot, could already be extinct.
But even if we ignore this important time lag, the notion of giving oral contraceptives to squirrels is absolutely dotty. The intention is to mix a contraceptive chemical into food for grey squirrels. What about other wildlife and what about those squirrels rejecting the food?
A feature of squirrels is that they collect and store food in caches for later use. What happens when grey squirrels store the drugged up food and other birds and animals find the food store?
No, the idea of contraceptives for squirrels is not only ridiculously expensive, it is a nonstarter. Which means we are left with the only real solution: a nationwide cull in which squirrels are shot.
I understand why many animal lovers will resist this apparently drastic answer. DEFRA itself - the organisation that happily insisted on the needless slaughter of seven million sheep, cattle and pigs during the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak - dares not suggest a cull in case it is accused by the welfare lobby of inhumanity.
But I'm sorry to say that logic - and the plight of the red squirrel - dictates that robust measures are the only option. We have to accept that culling is sometimes called for in conservation.
The trouble is that where animals and wildlife are concerned, reality has been suspended. In our metropolitan society, all furry animals except rats are sacred whatever damage they might inflict, so none of them can ever be killed. But nature is far more complicated than this.
We are now so divorced from the real world where animals are concerned that, when we buy junk food such as chicken nuggets, we don't pause to think they are made from hens kept and killed in the worst possible conditions.
Our meat from supermarkets is so wrapped and packaged and sanitised that any notion of animal slaughter is removed from it.
And this attitude applies to wildlife, too, promoted and encouraged by animal charities (who often depend on squirrel-loving old ladies for their financial bequests) and the politically correct BBC in its nature documentaries.
On the Springwatch programme, for example, the birdwatching presenter Bill Oddie has advocated feeding grey squirrels with peanuts.
How he squares this with research showing that grey squirrels and their passion for eggs are a major reason for plummeting population levels of birds including the nightingale, songthrush, spotted flycatcher and willow tit, I cannot understand. Perhaps he's more interested in viewing figures than wildlife conservation.
As I say, the answer to the grey squirrel problem is not a fanciful high-falutin' contraceptive, it is far more simple: a proper cull should be organised, not for five years' time, but for tomorrow.
The reasons are clear. Apart from eating the eggs of songbirds and woodland birds, grey squirrels do an enormous amount of damage to growing trees and shrubs, causing million of pounds worth of damage each year. In Dublin's Phoenix Park, they destroyed 80 per cent of the saplings.
The damage to red squirrels is two-fold. The greys chase the reds about aggressively during the breeding season, making them too stressed to breed.
In addition, the greys carry a disease called squirrel poxvirus, which does little harm to themselves, but is extremely contagious and almost always fatal to reds.
In a properly organised cull, the grey squirrels should be trapped, shot and - I know this may offend some animal lovers - preferably eaten.
Squirrels are regularly eaten in the U.S. and it is surely time that Britain's host of celebrity chefs stopped patting each other on the back and did something useful like developing squirrel casserole, baked squirrel, smoked squirrel and squirrel pate.
The meat tastes like a cross between chicken and rabbit and earlier in the year I was given an absolutely delicious squirrel burger. In Shropshire there are already some butchers who sell jointed squirrel, which I have eaten in a casserole - sadly I cannot give names and addresses because of animal rights activists to whom Britain's traditions of free speech seem anathema.
One of the simplest ways of introducing a cull in the countryside would be to use the so-called cross-compliance mechanism on the payment of farm subsidies.
At the moment farmers are required to undertake a number of environmental activities on their farms to qualify for their subsidies.
Grey squirrel control should simply be added to this 'cross compliance' list. In other words, all landowners receiving agricultural subsidies would be required to control the grey squirrels on their land.
At the moment the hard work of saving Britain's last red squirrels is being undertaken by private individuals who understand that wildlife conservation is not simply about being nice to fluffy animals.
On Anglesey, a cull of greys is proving successful. Since 1998 more than 7,500 have been culled and it is hoped final success will come in 2008 and the island's residents reds will be safe. Those involved have shown that a cull is possible and works.
Similarly in the Lake District the battle to save the reds is being fought by private individuals, with help from the holiday village organisation Center Parcs, when DEFRA and the National Trust (which owns 25 per cent of the Lakes) should be leading the way.
Jerry Moss, who has the title of red squirrel ranger at a Center Parcs' refuge for more than 150 healthy wild reds, is quite right when he says: "The people who sit behind desks making decisions simply don't realise how endangered the red squirrel is.
"We need more than volunteers, we need more people like me, only paid for by the Government. Without this, the grey will be out of control and the red squirrel is doomed. There is little time left, the situation is desperate."
So, pretty as they are, please don't feed the grey squirrels as Bill Oddie suggests. These tree rats really are a menace. Regards
Kathy
