Welfare of British Red Squirrels Will Come Before Grey Cousins
9/19/99
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Title: Welfare of British Red Squirrels Will Come Before Grey
Cousins
Source: British Broadcasting Corporation
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: September 19, 1999
Byline: Alex Kirby
Help is at hand for at least a few members of one of the UK's most
endangered mammals, the red squirrel, with the opening on 20
September of a nature reserve designed to protect them.
The sanctuary, which is only five miles from the centre of Newcastle-
upon-Tyne, has been established by the Wildlife Trusts, the national
body which co-ordinates the work of 46 county trusts.
It marks the first time the trusts have allocated a reserve to the
conservation of a single species.
Measures taken to protect the squirrels there will include planting
squirrel-friendly trees, checking the animals' numbers, giving them
extra food, and - if need be - controlling the encroaching grey
squirrel population.
There are now no more than 160,000 red squirrels in the whole
of Britain, most of them in Scotland, with smaller numbers in
northern England and Wales. The number in Northern Ireland is
unknown.
One of the pressures they face is habitat loss, but a significant
feature in their decline is the unstoppable advance of the greys.
Once the grey squirrels have established themselves in an area the
reds seldom survive for more than 15 years.
Conservationists fear that all the native red squirrels in Britain
could have vanished by 2010.
Better conditions
Northumberland, where the new reserve is sited, was the last county
to remain free of greys, but they arrived there five years ago. The
director-general of the Wildlife Trusts, Dr Simon Lyster, said: "The
work carried out for red squirrels at the new reserve is of national
importance".
"Its aim is to improve conditions locally for red squirrels
responsible at a site that is particularly susceptible to the grey
for the squirrel threat, and so it will act as a source of
content of information to other wildlife reserves."
In the long term, the best way of helping the reds is to manage
woodlands in their favour, planting the kinds of trees which suit
them, like Scots and lodgepole pine, Norway spruce, yew, hazel and
rose.
Creating corridors to link the sites where they live, and
constructing buffer zones of bare land or dense pinewood around
woodland to keep the greys at bay, can also help.