Plan to use contraceptive laced food out to control Grey Squirrel numbers (1 Viewer)

[Barred Wobbler]

Declare them a Super Food.
The UK had a successful campaign against the Coypu and we do seem to have a natural ability to wipe out native species albeit unintentional and.over a long period.
When have a significant proportion of the population feeding the damn things the tide can only go one way

I'd agree, but good luck with that.

We can't even get the UK population to eat one of my favourite foods - rabbit - and there's a lot more on a rabbit than there is on a grey squirrel. When I go on trips to Spain for the migrations the supermarkets all have rabbit on the shelves next to the chicken, whole, jointed or in cuts, and it's rabbit for dinner with a white wine sauce for me. I can't remember when the last time I saw rabbit in a British supermarket, it must have been about 20 years ago and even then it was priced as 'luxury' meat, priced way beyound its true value. You only see them in specialist butchers' now.

I blame Disney. They've got half the people thinking that animals (when we're not looking) all walk around on their hind legs, chat away merrily to one another and wear colouful gloves and jackets as they dance in sunlit glades.

 

[wolfbirder]

Are there any implications on fertility of any predator/scavenger that feeds on a Grey Squirrel that has taken on these drugs?

I haven’t seen the literature but was talking to a groundsmen where I live, about this just yesterday. Apparently not in answer to your question.

There are swarms of grey squirrels here where I live, no wonder there are so few passerines here.

 

[Hauksen]

Hi,

The UK had a successful campaign against the Coypu and we do seem to have a natural ability to wipe out native species albeit unintentional and.over a long period.

I'm afraid eradicating native species mostly involves habitat destruction, which isn't a good strategy to voluntarily apply.

The Coypu was target of several determined eradication efforts until success was achieved, and the infertility program site focusses on management, mentioning eradication only once. Maybe that's a case of "we'll take what we can get", but in my opinion, there's a great difference between a management and an eradication program.

Regards,

Henning

 

[jurek]

When I go on trips to Spain for the migrations the supermarkets all have rabbit on the shelves next to the chicken

Sounds like a business idea: export rabbit meat from Britain to the Mediterranean, and grey squirrels perhaps to Vietnam or China?

More seriously, some earlier 'humane conservation' was thinly disguised sabbotage of conservation. Somebody came with unrealistic proposals hoping to get media attention and block realistic plans.

 

[Mono]

The rabbit meat you see in Spanish supermarkets is farmed. Usually factory farmed in what can be appalling conditions.

This is the reality of rabbit farms in Spain

AnimaNaturalis carried out an undercover investigation into the rabbit meat industry in Spain. The rabbit is the third most raised species for meat in Europe, with about 180 million animals each year... and Spain is the main producer.

www.animanaturalis.org

 

[Andy Lakin]

Surely the fact that they are actively culling squirrels alongside the proposed contraception will cause a serious amount of opposition. Look at what has happened with the badger cull. Could this derail the project before it gets off the ground fully? Any large scale opposition is sure to increase costs greatly. It can't help that the vast majority of people have no idea what damage squirrels do as they only usually see them scampering about their local park. Surely if there was a big focus on helping the reds first and foremost that would get more people on side.

Is there a chance that a portion of the squirrel population will be immune to the drugs used and thrive once the squirrel numbers are down?

 

[Mono]

The badger cull has zero scientific credibility it is purely a political exercise to appease the Tory voting farmers.

The biggest problem I can see with a squirrel cull (albeit by sterility rather than gruesome death) is that it would work best in 100% Grey areas. I could imagine the who-hah if Reds were accidentally sterilised. But the scheme stands the best chance of public acceptance if it is seen to protect the Reds rather than seen as something to support the forestry industry.

The proposed scheme does need to address the question of selecting for resistant super-squirrels and the effect of predation on the drugged squirrels.

 

[njlarsen]

There are a lot more details on their website.

UK Squirrel Accord

squirrelaccord.uk

And in their briefing paper, attached.

It isn't really contraception as we think of it in humans, it is more of an infertility drug. A single dose will render males and females infertile for life.

Thanks for sharing the briefing paper. The approach with modifying vaccine to be taken up orally instead of having to inject them seems to be a very promising approach. I hope they will succeed and thereafter apply the same to the monkeys in Barbados (yes, these are also non-native, and plundering birds' nests is a habit of theirs). Even if we could just reduce the population to a quarter of the current it would still help.
Niels

 

[jurek]

I don't want to shot the potentially promising idea, but...

If one could clear any larger area of squirrels by feeding them contraceptives, one would be able to do the same by feeding them brutal old-fashioned poison. However, nobody managed to clear any larger area of squirrels by poisoning them until now. The problems are: fast breeding, fast turnover, missing few animals, re-invasion from other areas, and plain cost. The same factors would doom the contraceptive plan in practice, too.

An oral animal contraceptive which works in one dose for the lifetime 100% of the time is also unlikely biologically. Mammals where research is most advanced - humans, house mice and brown rats - do not seem to have a known one.

Surely, if it worked, there would be a queue of applications and not even for conservation. Such a person might even win a Peace Noble Prize for reducing crop losses to rats and mice, which still starve millions of humans...