A grey squirrel which may have ridden a train to the home of Wales’ largest red squirrel population has been captured, following fears it could have killed off the local species.
The animal was spotted by a member of the public on Anglesey in mid-February who reported it to Red Squirrels Trust Wales after weeks on the loose.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A grey squirrel which may have ridden a train to the home of Wales’ largest red squirrel population has been captured, following fears it could have killed off the local species.The animal was spotted by a member of the public on Anglesey in mid-February who reported it to Red Squirrels Trust Wales after weeks on the loose.
Dr Craig Shuttleworth said the greys had found a number of “Mission Impossible”-style ways of getting to the island - with one even spotted swimming across the Menai Strait.He spent weeks trying to track down the creature, setting up wildlife cameras and traps.
Dr Shuttleworth said the squirrel population was still recovering from a pox outbreak a few years ago, and that the island and the conservation effort “lived with the risk”.He said that the grey squirrel had since been euthanised as a non-native invasive species.
It is illegal to release them back into the wild, and was now going to be tested to see if it carried the pox.The charity had faced criticism after putting a picture on social media of the captured grey squirrel in a trap while it was still alive.He said it had been put up to show people the difference between a grey and a red, and they had no choice but to kill them once captured as it was the way to safeguard the red population.Dr Shuttleworth said that despite the constant monitoring on the island, the squirrels were finding a number of unusual ways to cross into it.“We never demonise grey squirrels…they are fascinating,” he said.
“It is like Mission Impossible, whether they are swimming across large bodies of water, or boarding a train, nothing surprises me anymore.Greys eat the same food as the reds, and so are threatening the population, even if they did not carry the virus.
“The red squirrels bring a lot of joy to people…they are so rare…people feed them and take photographs of them.”Dr Shuttleworth urged the public to report any sign of a grey squirrel on the island, even if they were not sure if it was a red or a grey.
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Huh. I have a fairly healthy population of both (north american) Grey and Red squirrels living in my backyard, and they seem to cohabitate just fine. Granted, the enviroment here in the midwest USA may be quite different from there.
I just never saw either species seem to have any problems thriving. The biggest challenge here (aside from automobiles) is red-tail hawks.
Presumably squirrel-pox is not prevalent around you.
Unfortunately it is in the UK and as a result red squirrels are now extinct in the majority of the country. They are just hanging on in a few isolated (literally in the case on Anglesey) strongholds where grey squirrels are not present.
The red squirrels we have in the UK (Sciurus vulgaris) are a completely different species to the red squirrels I think you’re referring to (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus).