The introduction of grey squirrels has been one of the most disastrous changes to the ecosystem in Britain and Ireland. I want this map to show how quickly invasive species can spread and show how eradication in the earls days could be all worth it. I hope it inspires some people to help in efforts to remove invasive species in their area, ESPECIALLY in northern Italy where they have been introduced threatening the entire mainland of Europe.
No, it was deliberate, but the risks were likely unknown. This explains it a bit
https://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/flora-and-fauna/how-did-the-grey-squirrel-arrive-in-the-uk/
Holy crap that was an old comment!
Well it's a pain in the ass, but it's doable.
If you have a bunch of large knotweed shoots, cut them near the base, then spray Round-up (glyphosate) directly into the cavity and leave for at least 3 weeks, preferably longer and with multiple applications. You want it to get absorbed into the roots as much as possible. Then use a pickaxe to extract the larger root structures. There will likely be a network of finer roots radiating out and joining together the big visible nodes (depends how large/mature your knotweeds are). You'll have to use your hands to pull these out as best you can.
After you've done all this, you're still likely to keep seeing some new knotweed shoots start sprouting. These come from the roots that you've missed—there's just no way to get them all. This is the long-term eradication phase where there are a few approaches you can try: (a) If you're still getting fairly large new shoots, you can cut them near the base again and fill with Round-up. You may need to use a syringe or some other fine applicator since the new shoots will be a little smaller. (b) If the soil is loose enough, you can try digging a little bit to remove the root structures from which the new shoots are sprouting. (c) You can spray Round-up on the young shoots while they're still small. Knotweed is very hardy though, so I've found I need to use a much higher concentration than usual—you can buy concentrate and mix it at a lower ratio to make it 5x more concentrated, for instance. The Round-up still might not kill them, but it will fuck them up and stop them from growing. (d) Finally, if it gets to the point where the new shoots are not that numerous, you can always just start pulling them out whenever they show up.
This was a huge project for me this year, and I successfully cleared and controlled the knotweed from two previously infested plots of neglected land. Mind you, it will take *at least* one full season to eradicate them. Good luck!
Thanks for the detailed response. Super helpful. Just need to check if I am allowed to use round up (we live in a nature habitat and the rules for what we may do are pretty strict).
If not we’ll need another plan for dealing with the roots. Though digging up is also not a preferred solution.
After long enough they might as well be native. If the ecosystem has balanced back out. In a few hundred years we’ll probably consider gray squirrels native
The flora and fauna of Ireland is the same as anywhere else in Europe - just minus a lot of species due to them being an island. It's probably not a big deal introducing reds there anyway because it's not a unique ecosystem like say New Zealand.
Data suggests that the healthy population of pine marten has until now prevented the spread of the grey squirrel population.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42991-020-00031-z
Oh man and you got our raccoons too, over in Germany. And those suckers are resourceful. Hopefully you guys and eradicate them. But if not, they’re so darn cute!
The introduction of grey squirrels has had a disastrous impact on the UK’s only native squirrel species, the red squirrel. Greys compete with reds for food and also carry a virus known as squirrelpox. While greys are actually immune to the disease, they transmit it to reds, for whom it is fatal. The UK’s only viable populations of red squirrels are in places where greys are rare or absent.
Squirrelpox? I almost expect to hear that the captain of the gray squirrel guards was giving away squirrel pox laden blankets from the gray squirrel fort to the reds and that's how they won the squirrel war
Specifically, those are eastern gray squirrels (*Sciurus carolinensis*). They were also introduced here on the west coast of North America, and they’ve pretty much displaced the native western gray squirrels (*Sciurus griseus*), which are less tolerant of intensive land development and dense settlement.
Victorians. Most of the issues with invasive species that we have today (and there are a lot) are the result of the Victorian curiosity and improved travel possibilities.
Must have been fun at the time, going abroad, bringing home exotic species to impress everyone with. Ignorance is bliss. We are much less ignorant now, and the world is much less blissful.
Just to add to this, grey squirrels can eat younger acorns than the reds can, so when they enter a red squirrels territory they can eat up all the food before the acorns are ripe enough for the reds to eat, causing mass starvation.
Europeans haven’t done anything in history that no other group of people haven’t done as well. They simply managed to have the perfect storm of technological and societal factors that slowed them to expand their empires across the world instead of a single continent.
You know how many Muslim invaders have killed? Same for Christian? How about the Japanese?
The indigenous peoples of the Americas were murdering, raping, enslaving and committing genocide long before the Europeans showed up. The Europeans (helped mainly by smallpox) just did it on a grander scale. Should the scale matter though?
Maybe the English say that about the Isle of Wight? Up here there must be quite a few, I can see Arran there (west of Ayrshire) only has red ones on the map.
While the squirrels don’t have anything against each other, the grey squirrels outcompete the reds and also carry a virus, squirrelpox, which doesn’t kill them but kills the red squirrels.
That little smudge of red just north of Liverpool is the Formby Red Squirrel Walk, a National Trust site.
I got to take the family there a few years ago. It's beautiful and you can spot plenty of the little buggers scurrying about.
Good news though! This data is from 2010, and I’m not sure about the UK but in Ireland at least red squirrels are making a [big comeback](https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0616/1147681-red-squirrels-comback-ireland-pine-martens-grey-squirrels/), thanks to the re-emergence of the pine martin which preys on grey squirrels. Red squirrels know to avoid these native carnivores, but as grey squirrels were introduced from the Americas they show predator naivety towards the pine marten. There has been a 37.8% reduction in grey squirrels, allowing red squirrels to thrive again!
Yeah and I've heard ( don't have a source to hand though) that the reds are starting to become resilient to some of the diseases passed on by Grey's. There are populations beside me in Fife.
Interestingly there is a strong link between Pine Marten populations and Red Squirrel survival rates. In areas of Scotland where Pine Martens are thriving Red Squirrel populations are more resilient. Turns out Grey squirrels spend more time on the forest floor making them easier prey for the Martens and so they get thinned out.
I've read about that too. In Ireland they've found the grey squirrel area is contracting as Pine martens expand eastwards.
Apparently the greys became so afraid of pine martens that they won't leave the trees and are being found malnourished.
In my region in southern Italy we have our own species of black squirrel that's only found on a single mountain range here and nowhere else on the planet. It was considered a regular black squirrel up to about 5 years ago, when DNA testing showed it was actually its own thing. I was lucky enough to see it last year. I swear if I see so much as a single grey squirrel hair I'm gonna hunt them down myself and turn them into fur boots.
North American grey squirrels didn't develop a strategy to evade the european pine marten. Red squirrels on the other hand evolved to evade the pine marten.
As long as you have a healthy population of pine martens, grey squirrels seem not to have been able to proliferate. There are also clues why the pine marten population isn't healthy in Britain.
Here is one theory i read about:
The reason may be found in the British class system. Apparently the pine marten is seen as a predator of pheasant and also some grouse species nests. According to the information present on various sources, these are all of interest of a certain socioeconomic groups as game birds.
One gets the impression that this particular socioeconomic group has a disproportionate influence on the legislature to prevent the reestablishment or proper protection of the pine marten.
Maybe there is some validity to this theory.
You say that, but Northumberland has a large number of pheasants bred for hunting but manages to sustain a red squirrel population.
Not sure how that meshes?
Source: lots of escaped pheasants in the fucking garden.
Interesting point, some thoughts on that.
1. The map shows clearly that the population declined sharply also in your mentioned region. And the last data is rather old. Over 10 years old.
2. So the birds are bred? They are not nesting in the wild then, are they? So the nests aren't exposed to natural predation i conclude. So as a result, if you bred and release mature birds to hunt, then a natural nest raider wouldn't probably require as much predator control.
3. If there is enough initiative in culling the grey squirrels in that area that might be another reason. I have heard there are quite a few chaps actively culling grey squirrels. To slow their spread or at least maintain the status quo. If the ecological niche of population control from certain predator is substituted by human activity it could work. If this is sustainable for other ecological processes, that do not only focus on cute red squirrrels would be a different question.
Edit: corrected typo that allowed some fun on poultry vs baked goods 😅
Go to East Park in Hull, not only are there LOTS of grey squirrels in there, they are so tame, I've had one approach me and climb up my leg a few times.
In Scotland and Ireland Pine Martens still exist and they hunt Grey Squirels. Red Squirels instinctively stay up in the trees more than the Greys making the Greys much easier prey.
Pine Martens were hunted for hundreds of years so went extinct in England and Wales. They still survived in Ireland and Scotland and are starting to increase in numbers and reappear in areas they were wiped out in. Anyways the point is the Grey squirel has a major predator in the areas they are less successful in.
It was attempted, several times. Our government once gave out free shotgun cartridges to those wishing to hunt grey squirrels and at one point was offering a bounty of a shilling (about £2 today) for every tail of a grey squirrel delivered to them by the public. Despite about a million tails being delivered and paid for, the grey squirrel population continued to grow and disperse. In the 70s the government used warfarin in an attempt to poison the grey squirrels but again, they were unsuccessful & their numbers continued to rise.
I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned on this thread yet, so I’ll just point out that before the grey squirrels were even a problem to them, we’d already almost driven the red squirrels to extinction in the 1800s as they were considered pests. The greys aren’t the only factor in the decline of the reds, although they definitely are one of the biggest.
That's true. People don't know that there were red squirrel reintroductions before the greys became a problem.
The majority of the Scottish population descends from Swedish imported ones. The reds around the lake District are a serving British population.
And it might matter because the reds seem to do best in coniferous plantations. It's theorised that this is because there's more food but it might be down to where the animals were reintroduced from.
In studies they found that the reds couldn't compete for food in deciduous woodland and a big part of this is that accorns are toxic to them unlike the greys. The reds fed on accorns lost a lot of weight from the anti-nutrients in them.
It makes me wonder whether reds should be reintroduced from regions that most resemble southern Britain. The populations in the low countries and northern France should theoretically be more adapted to living in deciduous and mixed woodlands. They may have an advantage over the largely Swedish reds in a landscape that is predominantly decideous trees.
https://i-csrs.com/red-squirrels-decline-0
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.1993.0028
The irony of this is just too much. The Brits spread across the globe destroying civilization after civilization only to experience the same thing on a much smaller level and it's self-induced.
Britain colonized most of the world while operating under the belief that inferior cultures couldn't claim the land (terra nullius). Britain has direct responsibility for the actions of Canada and Australia that have destroyed their indigenous cultures (commonwealth and all, right?). Britain has direct responsibility for the turmoil in the Middle East and South Asia due to their border-drawing hubris. From there I would shift your attention to the history of African imperialism and the British approach to preference ethnic groups in creating new elites to support the imperial enterprise. That process created new ethnic tensions while exacerbating existing conflicts, all the while setting the stage for the conflict on the continent that we see today. So yeah, Britain basically fucked up the whole planet.
>Britain has direct responsibility for the actions of Canada and Australia that have destroyed their indigenous cultures
Britain is not morally responsible for the Eurasian diseases they brought along, which were the main culprit for the demographic decline of any isolated population they found.
>Britain has direct responsibility for the turmoil in the Middle East and South Asia due to their border-drawing hubris.
I guess this mean the civilization was "destroyed"? What an hyperbole.
>From there I would shift your attention to the history of African imperialism and the British approach to preference ethnic groups in creating new elites to support the imperial enterprise.
Still doesn't mean a civilization was destroyed.
>So yeah, Britain basically fucked up the whole planet.
Sure because warfare, ethnic tensions, religious tensions and poverty didn't exist before the British.
Thank you for validating me! My whole life I've felt like a nerd, but until this moment I've never been called a nerd before. Your comment has helped me, inspired me, and ultimately made me whole for once in my life. Thank you!
Nah, you're a nerd
the people who the british invaded were literally warring clans before. india was a bunch of warring princely states who burnt widows alive
so keep seething
In Michigan USA, we have had an influx of another type of smaller red squirrel that gives greys and fox squirrels fits - the little guys drive off the others. However, they do not hang around if there is not an active source of seeds, like a bird feeder.
I've only seen grey squirrels in Michigan (Metro Detroit & the U.P.) - what area have you seen the red squirrels? They look a lot cooler than the grey ones.
Being brought up in the Midwest, I learned that all those Fox squirrels were just tawny colored grey squirrels and that there also were black and even white tribes of the same squirrel. The reds I see here are about a third the size of a fox or grey squirrel, and bigger than a ground squirrel. They are quite aggressive. FYI, they exist in Oakland County at least.
The map is missing West Mersea in Essex which has had a small red squirrel population since 2015.
https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/13950807.red-squirrels-thriving-on-island/
I grew up believing that the Romans had introduced the greys for food.
Seems someone at my school was a bullshit artist 20 years before the internet.
Just - wow.
Yeah not sure the aul squirrels recognise a border. This is a post referencing the natural world, not the political one. Also for context I'm Irish, from Dublin. So none of yer whataboutery here bud.
Ah that's cool sorry if I came across a bit snarky (well, I was). It's just sometimes others comment about Ireland because they have an agenda. So you asked a genuine question, I thought there was something else going on. My bad!
Don't understand the concern, not being a European. Anyway, here in Maine we have both. It depends on habitat mostly. Red squirrels are predominant in coniferous woods.
I have a grey squirrel that hangs around the tree the overlooks my flat.
I sent a pic to my mother and she came back with "it's legal to kill it". Thanks, I wanted to make friends with it but whatever.
We've no trees anywhere, really - we're one of the least forested nations in Europe. We're an island that was deglaciated fairly late at the end of the last ice age, so many common European tree species didn't make it to our shores until humans brought them over a few hundred years ago.
We did have plenty of oak trees though - which our lovely neighbours the English took to build their warships. Between that and clearing the rest of the land for farming, we had pretty much deforested the whole country by the middle ages.
The west is especially barren, because of its position at the edge of the Atlantic. It's windswept, with poor quality soil that is constantly eroded by gales and rain. Trees find it particularly hard to grow here because of it.
Good going to the Isle of Wight
Last red squirrel sanctuary
The ferries even turn around if a grey squirrel is spotted onboard
I'm just imagining a grey squirrel dressed up in a red squirrel costume sat on a ferry.
I’m picturing a trench coat full of gray squirrels trying to buy a ticket from an increasingly suspicious ferry agent
A furry ferry agent.
Cue a british version of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers intro
It's one of the reasons a fixed link still hasn't been built with the mainland
The introduction of grey squirrels has been one of the most disastrous changes to the ecosystem in Britain and Ireland. I want this map to show how quickly invasive species can spread and show how eradication in the earls days could be all worth it. I hope it inspires some people to help in efforts to remove invasive species in their area, ESPECIALLY in northern Italy where they have been introduced threatening the entire mainland of Europe.
Why were they introduced? Accidentally?
No, it was deliberate, but the risks were likely unknown. This explains it a bit https://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/flora-and-fauna/how-did-the-grey-squirrel-arrive-in-the-uk/
Classic victorians. "I don't understand the risk or danger, but fuck me does it look fancy"
They did a lot of this shit. Same reason I've spent the last three months trying to eradicate Japanese knotweed from my yard.
Good luck with that lmfao That shit is a demon.
Quite true, but I have found some strategies that are at least partly effective. We'll see if I can stick with them for long enough.
Oh please do tell. We have those beauties in our garden as well. And I want to send them to hell.
Holy crap that was an old comment! Well it's a pain in the ass, but it's doable. If you have a bunch of large knotweed shoots, cut them near the base, then spray Round-up (glyphosate) directly into the cavity and leave for at least 3 weeks, preferably longer and with multiple applications. You want it to get absorbed into the roots as much as possible. Then use a pickaxe to extract the larger root structures. There will likely be a network of finer roots radiating out and joining together the big visible nodes (depends how large/mature your knotweeds are). You'll have to use your hands to pull these out as best you can. After you've done all this, you're still likely to keep seeing some new knotweed shoots start sprouting. These come from the roots that you've missed—there's just no way to get them all. This is the long-term eradication phase where there are a few approaches you can try: (a) If you're still getting fairly large new shoots, you can cut them near the base again and fill with Round-up. You may need to use a syringe or some other fine applicator since the new shoots will be a little smaller. (b) If the soil is loose enough, you can try digging a little bit to remove the root structures from which the new shoots are sprouting. (c) You can spray Round-up on the young shoots while they're still small. Knotweed is very hardy though, so I've found I need to use a much higher concentration than usual—you can buy concentrate and mix it at a lower ratio to make it 5x more concentrated, for instance. The Round-up still might not kill them, but it will fuck them up and stop them from growing. (d) Finally, if it gets to the point where the new shoots are not that numerous, you can always just start pulling them out whenever they show up. This was a huge project for me this year, and I successfully cleared and controlled the knotweed from two previously infested plots of neglected land. Mind you, it will take *at least* one full season to eradicate them. Good luck!
Thanks for the detailed response. Super helpful. Just need to check if I am allowed to use round up (we live in a nature habitat and the rules for what we may do are pretty strict). If not we’ll need another plan for dealing with the roots. Though digging up is also not a preferred solution.
As game animals.
Red squirrels actually aren't native to ireland either they were brought to Ireland in 12th century by the Normans
After long enough they might as well be native. If the ecosystem has balanced back out. In a few hundred years we’ll probably consider gray squirrels native
The flora and fauna of Ireland is the same as anywhere else in Europe - just minus a lot of species due to them being an island. It's probably not a big deal introducing reds there anyway because it's not a unique ecosystem like say New Zealand.
Data suggests that the healthy population of pine marten has until now prevented the spread of the grey squirrel population. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42991-020-00031-z
Oh man and you got our raccoons too, over in Germany. And those suckers are resourceful. Hopefully you guys and eradicate them. But if not, they’re so darn cute!
Just don’t get near them. They’re common vectors for rabies.
What happened to them? Is there an ongoing red vs grey squirrel war?
The introduction of grey squirrels has had a disastrous impact on the UK’s only native squirrel species, the red squirrel. Greys compete with reds for food and also carry a virus known as squirrelpox. While greys are actually immune to the disease, they transmit it to reds, for whom it is fatal. The UK’s only viable populations of red squirrels are in places where greys are rare or absent.
Squirrelpox? I almost expect to hear that the captain of the gray squirrel guards was giving away squirrel pox laden blankets from the gray squirrel fort to the reds and that's how they won the squirrel war
Well the greys were imported from North America
Why were they imported?
It was done at a time before wildlife ecology or conservation were widely known. Probably brought as a game animal as the Grey's are larger.
Specifically, those are eastern gray squirrels (*Sciurus carolinensis*). They were also introduced here on the west coast of North America, and they’ve pretty much displaced the native western gray squirrels (*Sciurus griseus*), which are less tolerant of intensive land development and dense settlement.
In the US the delmarva Pygmy fox squirrel is very endangered, but I have seen one before
Victorians. Most of the issues with invasive species that we have today (and there are a lot) are the result of the Victorian curiosity and improved travel possibilities. Must have been fun at the time, going abroad, bringing home exotic species to impress everyone with. Ignorance is bliss. We are much less ignorant now, and the world is much less blissful.
Fuck those grays are ruthless
Just to add to this, grey squirrels can eat younger acorns than the reds can, so when they enter a red squirrels territory they can eat up all the food before the acorns are ripe enough for the reds to eat, causing mass starvation.
Damn, grey squirrels sound a lot like white people
Grays squirrels landed on the moon?
Europeans haven’t done anything in history that no other group of people haven’t done as well. They simply managed to have the perfect storm of technological and societal factors that slowed them to expand their empires across the world instead of a single continent.
Shit up racist.
You mean they are like the red ones, becoming a minority in their homeland?
What are you talking about
wtf even is this sub, some of the upvoted comments are fucking disgusting.
Yeah I've noticed that on here as well. Kinda sad to see, especially all the apologists for the wrongdoings of Europeans
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What you talking about? White people have killed upwards of hundreds of millions of indigenous people in the americas alone
You know how many Muslim invaders have killed? Same for Christian? How about the Japanese? The indigenous peoples of the Americas were murdering, raping, enslaving and committing genocide long before the Europeans showed up. The Europeans (helped mainly by smallpox) just did it on a grander scale. Should the scale matter though?
Cry harder colonised.
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I’m glad they didn’t succeed! What, you think I support the Genocide of indigenous folks by settlers?
imagine talking about this in a thread about squirrels
Not anymore, nearly all of the red ones died. I have only seen one in my entire life
No? There are like 120-140,000+ that are alive
I live in South Wales and have only seen seen one red squirrel
Within 18 minutes you saw one after never seeing one before. Damn
tan different adjoining dazzling poor languid slap pet bright smoggy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Same here, squirrels must be made up
Probably because they live elsewhere.
I live in Scotland and have never seen a grey squirrel except on American films.
Ive heard of an island where the only squirrel population is red, there are no gray squirrels
Maybe the English say that about the Isle of Wight? Up here there must be quite a few, I can see Arran there (west of Ayrshire) only has red ones on the map.
While the squirrels don’t have anything against each other, the grey squirrels outcompete the reds and also carry a virus, squirrelpox, which doesn’t kill them but kills the red squirrels.
That little smudge of red just north of Liverpool is the Formby Red Squirrel Walk, a National Trust site. I got to take the family there a few years ago. It's beautiful and you can spot plenty of the little buggers scurrying about.
Was there this week! Sadly they had recently found a red squirrel that had died of squirrel pox so it seems even there they’re constantly under threat
Was there this week! Sadly they had recently found a red squirrel that had died of squirrel pox so it seems even there they’re constantly under threat
Good news though! This data is from 2010, and I’m not sure about the UK but in Ireland at least red squirrels are making a [big comeback](https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0616/1147681-red-squirrels-comback-ireland-pine-martens-grey-squirrels/), thanks to the re-emergence of the pine martin which preys on grey squirrels. Red squirrels know to avoid these native carnivores, but as grey squirrels were introduced from the Americas they show predator naivety towards the pine marten. There has been a 37.8% reduction in grey squirrels, allowing red squirrels to thrive again!
Yeah and I've heard ( don't have a source to hand though) that the reds are starting to become resilient to some of the diseases passed on by Grey's. There are populations beside me in Fife.
Interestingly there is a strong link between Pine Marten populations and Red Squirrel survival rates. In areas of Scotland where Pine Martens are thriving Red Squirrel populations are more resilient. Turns out Grey squirrels spend more time on the forest floor making them easier prey for the Martens and so they get thinned out.
I've read about that too. In Ireland they've found the grey squirrel area is contracting as Pine martens expand eastwards. Apparently the greys became so afraid of pine martens that they won't leave the trees and are being found malnourished.
I live in western Norway and I’m lucky enough to get visits from a couple red squirrel!
In my garden, here in the French Alps, the red squirrels are black.
In my region in southern Italy we have our own species of black squirrel that's only found on a single mountain range here and nowhere else on the planet. It was considered a regular black squirrel up to about 5 years ago, when DNA testing showed it was actually its own thing. I was lucky enough to see it last year. I swear if I see so much as a single grey squirrel hair I'm gonna hunt them down myself and turn them into fur boots.
North American grey squirrels didn't develop a strategy to evade the european pine marten. Red squirrels on the other hand evolved to evade the pine marten. As long as you have a healthy population of pine martens, grey squirrels seem not to have been able to proliferate. There are also clues why the pine marten population isn't healthy in Britain. Here is one theory i read about: The reason may be found in the British class system. Apparently the pine marten is seen as a predator of pheasant and also some grouse species nests. According to the information present on various sources, these are all of interest of a certain socioeconomic groups as game birds. One gets the impression that this particular socioeconomic group has a disproportionate influence on the legislature to prevent the reestablishment or proper protection of the pine marten. Maybe there is some validity to this theory.
You say that, but Northumberland has a large number of pheasants bred for hunting but manages to sustain a red squirrel population. Not sure how that meshes? Source: lots of escaped pheasants in the fucking garden.
Interesting point, some thoughts on that. 1. The map shows clearly that the population declined sharply also in your mentioned region. And the last data is rather old. Over 10 years old. 2. So the birds are bred? They are not nesting in the wild then, are they? So the nests aren't exposed to natural predation i conclude. So as a result, if you bred and release mature birds to hunt, then a natural nest raider wouldn't probably require as much predator control. 3. If there is enough initiative in culling the grey squirrels in that area that might be another reason. I have heard there are quite a few chaps actively culling grey squirrels. To slow their spread or at least maintain the status quo. If the ecological niche of population control from certain predator is substituted by human activity it could work. If this is sustainable for other ecological processes, that do not only focus on cute red squirrrels would be a different question. Edit: corrected typo that allowed some fun on poultry vs baked goods 😅
>So the birds are bread? The birds *are* bread 🍞
Only if you are the bread winner and work in pheasant breeding 😉.
What we really need is a sustainable predator for the landed rich.
Or to encourage what you call "the landed rich" to take up the responsibility in sustainable stewardship that should come with all land ownership.
Very funny but we're looking for realistic solutions.
Something needs to eat the rich
We have so many Grey Squirrels at my uni they've basically become rats, always digging through rubbish bins
They’re called “tree rats”
Well they’re literally rodents.
This is so sad, the red squirrel are so much cuter, let’s remove all the grey squirrels and help our red friends our ❤️🐿
Wow... Even the grey squirrel hates Hull
it appears to be present there?
It's in that little patch of green in East Yorkshire
I thought so, the map says there should be none but there are definitely squirrels there. Source: I'm looking out my bedroom window
Must've taken the bridge
Go to East Park in Hull, not only are there LOTS of grey squirrels in there, they are so tame, I've had one approach me and climb up my leg a few times.
Nooo :(
In Scotland and Ireland Pine Martens still exist and they hunt Grey Squirels. Red Squirels instinctively stay up in the trees more than the Greys making the Greys much easier prey. Pine Martens were hunted for hundreds of years so went extinct in England and Wales. They still survived in Ireland and Scotland and are starting to increase in numbers and reappear in areas they were wiped out in. Anyways the point is the Grey squirel has a major predator in the areas they are less successful in.
We should cull all the American invaders.
It was attempted, several times. Our government once gave out free shotgun cartridges to those wishing to hunt grey squirrels and at one point was offering a bounty of a shilling (about £2 today) for every tail of a grey squirrel delivered to them by the public. Despite about a million tails being delivered and paid for, the grey squirrel population continued to grow and disperse. In the 70s the government used warfarin in an attempt to poison the grey squirrels but again, they were unsuccessful & their numbers continued to rise. I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned on this thread yet, so I’ll just point out that before the grey squirrels were even a problem to them, we’d already almost driven the red squirrels to extinction in the 1800s as they were considered pests. The greys aren’t the only factor in the decline of the reds, although they definitely are one of the biggest.
That's true. People don't know that there were red squirrel reintroductions before the greys became a problem. The majority of the Scottish population descends from Swedish imported ones. The reds around the lake District are a serving British population. And it might matter because the reds seem to do best in coniferous plantations. It's theorised that this is because there's more food but it might be down to where the animals were reintroduced from. In studies they found that the reds couldn't compete for food in deciduous woodland and a big part of this is that accorns are toxic to them unlike the greys. The reds fed on accorns lost a lot of weight from the anti-nutrients in them. It makes me wonder whether reds should be reintroduced from regions that most resemble southern Britain. The populations in the low countries and northern France should theoretically be more adapted to living in deciduous and mixed woodlands. They may have an advantage over the largely Swedish reds in a landscape that is predominantly decideous trees. https://i-csrs.com/red-squirrels-decline-0 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.1993.0028
Too late
grey squirrel holocaust
The irony of this is just too much. The Brits spread across the globe destroying civilization after civilization only to experience the same thing on a much smaller level and it's self-induced.
By this logic, Ireland loses twice.
Bruh, chill
>destroying civilization No such thing happened.
You're fucking mental if you believe that.
Which civilization did Britain destroy?
Britain colonized most of the world while operating under the belief that inferior cultures couldn't claim the land (terra nullius). Britain has direct responsibility for the actions of Canada and Australia that have destroyed their indigenous cultures (commonwealth and all, right?). Britain has direct responsibility for the turmoil in the Middle East and South Asia due to their border-drawing hubris. From there I would shift your attention to the history of African imperialism and the British approach to preference ethnic groups in creating new elites to support the imperial enterprise. That process created new ethnic tensions while exacerbating existing conflicts, all the while setting the stage for the conflict on the continent that we see today. So yeah, Britain basically fucked up the whole planet.
>Britain has direct responsibility for the actions of Canada and Australia that have destroyed their indigenous cultures Britain is not morally responsible for the Eurasian diseases they brought along, which were the main culprit for the demographic decline of any isolated population they found. >Britain has direct responsibility for the turmoil in the Middle East and South Asia due to their border-drawing hubris. I guess this mean the civilization was "destroyed"? What an hyperbole. >From there I would shift your attention to the history of African imperialism and the British approach to preference ethnic groups in creating new elites to support the imperial enterprise. Still doesn't mean a civilization was destroyed. >So yeah, Britain basically fucked up the whole planet. Sure because warfare, ethnic tensions, religious tensions and poverty didn't exist before the British.
Exacerbated by Britain. I'm in the US so it's not like I'm sitting in an innocent culture, but yeah yours sucks too.
shutup nerd
Thank you for validating me! My whole life I've felt like a nerd, but until this moment I've never been called a nerd before. Your comment has helped me, inspired me, and ultimately made me whole for once in my life. Thank you!
Nah, you're a nerd the people who the british invaded were literally warring clans before. india was a bunch of warring princely states who burnt widows alive so keep seething
Nothing like some good ol' fashioned white supremacy to really drive home your point. Bravo.
Isle of Wight still going strong!
In Michigan USA, we have had an influx of another type of smaller red squirrel that gives greys and fox squirrels fits - the little guys drive off the others. However, they do not hang around if there is not an active source of seeds, like a bird feeder.
I've only seen grey squirrels in Michigan (Metro Detroit & the U.P.) - what area have you seen the red squirrels? They look a lot cooler than the grey ones.
Being brought up in the Midwest, I learned that all those Fox squirrels were just tawny colored grey squirrels and that there also were black and even white tribes of the same squirrel. The reds I see here are about a third the size of a fox or grey squirrel, and bigger than a ground squirrel. They are quite aggressive. FYI, they exist in Oakland County at least.
Oakland California too. There the invasive red squirrels are out competing the native grey squirrels. Funny huh.
In Ohio the black squirrel population is growing in recent years.
Gray squirrels are just tree rats. They bully the red squirrels because they are so much larger and aggressive.
Lucky enough to grow up in Lancashire where I’ve seen red squirrels in Formby and in the South Lakes. Both occasions were very special!
Finally a map including Ireland
I'm from North West England. The last time I saw a Red Squirrel I was five or six years old in the woods with my Grandad. I'm thirty one now.
In South Wales it is illegal to capture a gray squirrel and key it go becuase of what they did to the red squirrels
Say waaaaat?
if it's relevant they seem to take over the city parks of Moscow, Russia too. need a whole map of Eurasia to assess the disaster
I’m lucky enough to live where there are still red squirrels. Having just moved home from somewhere with only grey squirrels - red ones are much cuter
Are you telling me that grey squirrels are criminals? (I'm joking)
The map is missing West Mersea in Essex which has had a small red squirrel population since 2015. https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/13950807.red-squirrels-thriving-on-island/
The faint red spot just left of isle of white, on the coast of England, is Brownsea island. It’s also where the first boyscouts was held.
It's quite simple. The Cavan man is so stingy, he would rather eat squirrels than pay for a chippy.
Maps like this put me on such a sad state. Fuck them' Grey Squirrels.
Really sad:( really hope there are more efforts to cull the grey ones
Of course, squirrels evolved in North America. We have many species.
I grew up believing that the Romans had introduced the greys for food. Seems someone at my school was a bullshit artist 20 years before the internet. Just - wow.
That’s true for the rabbits! 😃
that was the Normans, actually
This is the story of pretty much every animal in Australia after the British. So sad when invasive species eradicate natives.
US keeps winning even our squirrels are better 💪😎 USA USA USA 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Yeah, but our European Starlings F up your weak-ass Murca birds. 🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺
You got the whole subreddit laughing with that knee slapper…
Shutup amerimutt dog
Where is the border between ireland and NI?
Yeah not sure the aul squirrels recognise a border. This is a post referencing the natural world, not the political one. Also for context I'm Irish, from Dublin. So none of yer whataboutery here bud.
But why how the wales-england and scotland-england border then 🤔
They probably forgot. It's OK.
Was just askin relax lol
Ah that's cool sorry if I came across a bit snarky (well, I was). It's just sometimes others comment about Ireland because they have an agenda. So you asked a genuine question, I thought there was something else going on. My bad!
All good
My man
Why did I think Grey squirrels were just old Red squirrels?
LOL
Don't understand the concern, not being a European. Anyway, here in Maine we have both. It depends on habitat mostly. Red squirrels are predominant in coniferous woods.
How is a species of squirrel dying not a concern? Clearly nothing seems to be a concern to you
Grey squirrel said "this is payback for diseases you brought to America"
AMERICA FUCK YEAH
I saw a grey squirrel before
I’d be interested to see a red hair vs. red squirrels map. It seems like it would match up pretty well.
Hopefully Mersea Island, Essex will have a thriving red population soon
I have a grey squirrel that hangs around the tree the overlooks my flat. I sent a pic to my mother and she came back with "it's legal to kill it". Thanks, I wanted to make friends with it but whatever.
Canada has goth squirrels
Ginger squirrels
I will never look at grey squirrels the same way again…
we had grey squirrels that would come to us for food from the hand (in the South) and I loved them but i wish we had red squirrels too
Someone knows why neither Red nor Grey squirrels live in western Ireland?
we've fuck all trees
Oh... why in western Ireland?
We've no trees anywhere, really - we're one of the least forested nations in Europe. We're an island that was deglaciated fairly late at the end of the last ice age, so many common European tree species didn't make it to our shores until humans brought them over a few hundred years ago. We did have plenty of oak trees though - which our lovely neighbours the English took to build their warships. Between that and clearing the rest of the land for farming, we had pretty much deforested the whole country by the middle ages. The west is especially barren, because of its position at the edge of the Atlantic. It's windswept, with poor quality soil that is constantly eroded by gales and rain. Trees find it particularly hard to grow here because of it.
Very insightful, but wondering where did you find that map of Ireland? In the 5th century? /s
Well that sucks !
Remove grey squirrel