The Red Squirrel

Laurence Speight

The red squirrel is so rare on the island of Ireland that many consider it a mythical creature. Even people whose business it is to study and protect them have not seen one in its natural habitat. Like the red deer and the red fox the red squirrel is native to the island and is thought to have been here since the end of the ice age 10,000 years ago. It is likely that many of the red squirrels that live in the woodlands and plantation forests today originate from stock brought into the country from the UK and the continent at various times in the past 400 years.

The demise of the red squirrel can be traced to the arrival of the American grey squirrel in County Longford in 1911 when six pairs were released at a wedding party at Castle Forbes. Since then the grey squirrel has out-competed the red squirrel to become common in most parts of the country. One reason is grey squirrels are bigger, bolder, stronger and less specialised than the red, better able to make use of food sources such as acorns and hazelnuts. As red and grey squirrels can co-habit where there is sufficient food it is thought the main reason for the demise of the red squirrel is the Parapox virus which grey squirrels carry and pass onto the reds. Death occurs within three weeks of infection. It is a painful death. Although grey squirrels carry the virus they are immune to it.

There is hope for the survival of the red squirrel. Dublin and Belfast zoos have a red squirrel captive breeding programme and release red squirrels into grey squirrel free habitat. There is a network of local red squirrel groups across Ireland which monitor red squirrels, place feeders out for them and pass on dead specimens to laboratories for analysis. They have a policy of trapping and dispatching grey squirrels especially in locations where there are known red squirrel populations. The grey squirrels are killed in a humane stress-free manner by trained group members. Once a grey squirrel is trapped it is a criminal offence to release it into the wild as it is an invasive species.

The Irish Squirrel & Pine Martin Project at NUI Galway is studying the relationship between pine martins and both squirrel species. Initial findings suggest that when pine martins take up residence in an area where there are both red and grey squirrels the grey squirrel population declines. It is thought this is because grey squirrels are easier prey than red squirrels. In addition the breeding habits of the grey are disrupted by the presence of pine martens.

 Grey squirrels are not only a threat to red squirrels but can kill trees through stripping them of their bark. The Forestry Commission, Edinburgh, estimate that up to 5% of damaged trees may die and many more will have degraded timber value. The financial cost can be enormous. There is also the loss of biodiversity and amenity.

An active interest in red squirrels will not only help protect them but is a pathway to a greater understanding of the biodiversity in your local area. Standing still in woodland, listening and surveying the trees for squirrels, is meditation with a practical purpose. If you don’t see a red squirrel you may see other creatures, and in spring and summer be enchanted by bird song and the rich variety of flora.

Humbert Wolfe’s poem The Grey Squirrel (1885-1940) tells us that the threat of the grey squirrel to the reds and bio-diversity in general has long been known. When Wolfe says that grey squirrels eat red squirrels he probably means this metaphorically. The poem raises interesting questions about our relationship with other species.

The Grey Squirrel 

Like a small grey 

coffee-pot 

sits the squirrel,

 He is not

 All he should be 

Kills by dozens trees,

 and eats 

his red-brown cousins 

 The keeper on the

 other hand, 

who shot him, 

is a Christian,

 and

 loves his enemies, 

which shows

 the squirrel was not

one of those. 

If you would like to become involved in a red squirrel group contact one of the following:
 Biodiversity NI:  ·
Northern Ireland Squirrel Forum
Fermanagh Red Squirrel Group .

Road kill, Correl Glen, Co. Fermanagh, 13.09.2012, photo by Laurence Speight


 Sources: Red Squirrel Conservation Handbook, Mourne Heritage Trust, February 2010 Controlling Grey Squirrel Damage to Woodlands, Forestry Commission, August 2007 Wicklow Mountains National Park: www.wicklowmountainsnationalpark.com The Irish Squirrel & Pine Martin Project: www.woodlandmammals.com

New Year's resolutions

If your resolutions for the New Year include working to make our world a more peaceful, just and healthy one, why not join the Green Party?  The Fermanagh and South Tyrone consitituency group meets every month in the bar of the Horseshoe and Saddlers pub in Enniskillen for informal conversation and sharing of ideas about the issues which really matter in the world today.  Our next meeting will be on Thursday 17th January at 6pm and we look forward to seeing you there.  For further information, please email tanya@crystalbard.com.  Oh, and a very happy new year to you all.

Reasons to be ... less than cheerful

Some sobering seasonal thoughts from Laurence

Cause for Despair

Although there is much to celebrate, find wondrous and joyful in today’s world, human folly, cruelty and greed lead one to despair. A case in point is the war in the Congo in which an estimated 5 million people, mostly hard working impoverished villagers have been killed since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The brutality meted out by soldiers of the various armies on civilians, in particular women, sickens. The war gives weight to the William Golding idea that given the circumstances human beings will inflict pain and suffering on others without measure. By all accounts depravity has triumphed in the Congo.

Another cause for despair is that hubris, rather than empathy, determines how we interact with the environment. Since the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962 the billions of words spoken and written about the ruin our consumer culture wreaks on the fragile web of life has not brought about a decline on our reliance on fossil fuels, mono crops and general wastefulness. Our megaphone morality does not prevent the forced displacement of indigenous peoples from lands in which they have lived in environmentally sustainable ways for generations. In almost all cases the hand behind their expulsion is big business and financial speculators who want unfettered access to trees, soil, water and minerals.

The complicated nature of the global political and economic order enables the affluent to use the bounty gouged from the natural environment with a clear conscience. Ecocide and abuse of the poor are inextricably bound-up with our much-loved electronic devices, cosmetics and food. The war in the Congo, mainly in the eastern part of the country, is driven more by the desire of competing interests to control its enormous mineral wealth than by ethnic rivalries or political ideology.

The Congo has deposits of gold, tin, tungsten, tantalum, copper, coltan and cobalt worth trillions of dollars. The country holds 70 percent of the world’s supply of tantalum, a metal used in mobile phones, tablets, i-Pods, laptops and other electronics.  The purchase of these goods wrapped now in Christmas tinsel pays for the bullets and boots of the armies in the Congo.

Tin is another vital component of electronic goods. Kate Hodal informs us in The Guardian Weekend, 24 November that mining tin on Bangka Island, east of Sumatra “has scarred the island’s landscape, bulldozed its farms and forests, killed off its fish stocks and coral reefs ... The damage is best seen from the air, as pockets of lush forest huddle amid huge swaths of barren orange earth, this is pockmarked with graves, many holding the bodies of miners who have died over the centuries digging for tin. Encircling the island are the dredgers and the suction ships and the thousands of illegal pontoons sucking up ore from the seabed like mechanised mosquitoes.”

Hodal’s account describes in microcosm what we are doing to the whole planet in pursuit of what we imagine to be the good life. In an article on Climate Change in New Scientist, 17 November, Steven Sherwood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, is quoted as saying that if we “fully ‘develop’ all of the world’s coal, tar sands, shales and other fossil fuels we run a high risk of ending up in a few generations with a largely unliveable planet.”

The idea that in a few generations the Earth may no longer be the home of humankind, and other life-forms, is frightening. Yet the evidence suggests this is precisely the course we are set upon with governments giving more subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewable sources of energy, sanctioning the death of the seas and the loss of biodiversity. The building of the Belo Monte Dam in the Brazilian Amazon and Brazil’s recently enacted Forest Code, the latter will have global environmental consequences, vividly illustrates our relationship with the Earth, which is trashing it for trifles.  

The 2012 end of year report card on humankind’s relationship with the environment and action on justice issues fills me with despair.

Wishing all our readers a happy Christmas.

Laurence Speight