Monday, January 18, 2010

What exactly is it that Grey Squirrels are doing to British Woodland?

I keep hearing about 'the culling' of Grey Squirrels but I can't understand why. So I read an article today where Prince Charles says they are to blame for the immense and increasing damage to woods and wildlife across the country.


But just what is it exactly that they are doing and why are Red Squirrels not equally to blame?


Just all sounds like some sort of racist genocide against Greys if you ask me. lolWhat exactly is it that Grey Squirrels are doing to British Woodland?
They nick all the nuts, the thieving b'stards. Send em back, bloody immigrant vermin.What exactly is it that Grey Squirrels are doing to British Woodland?
The Grey Squirrels are actually doing nothing wrong, just surviving in a land still relatively alien to them.


Man introduced Grey Squirrels to Britain, and they are actually not to blame for the Red Squirrels decline.


Competition with the Grey Squirrel over food alone is not a mechanism of sufficient strength to account for the rate and pattern of red decline and gray squirrel expansion.


Red Squirrels are in decline because of lack of habitat,food and an illness that utterly destroys them, that Greys happen to be immune too.


Red Squirrels are generally less hardier than Greys and that is why climate,food,and disease are wiping them out.


Grey Squirrels are more likely to scavenge then Reds so survive better in barren environments, evidence in Scotland is showing that the Red Squirrel is declining slower the further north they go, suggesting that tree cover and more pace per Squirrel to not transmit parapoxvirus, is helping them recover ever so slightly.


So you see this is less about the Grey Squirrel and actually more about illness and loss of habitat.
They strip the bark off trees - particularly young trees - which leaves them vulnerable to disease and fungus.





As a species they are more prolific than the native Reds, larger and stronger and since their introduction about 100 years ago have gradually taken over the traditional habitats of the Reds.





As usual, it was humans messing around with the natural order of things that caused the problem - the Reds were in balance with their environment, the greys were meant to be somewhere else.
The grey squirrels are foreigners, coming over here eating our woodland plants and taking over the red squirrel's habitats, how dare they.
Like so many immigrant's they came and took over pushing the natives to the sidelines taking the food from their mouths using their stealth and additional size.
Grey squirrels strip the bark off trees killing them; they spread a dangerous virus to our native Red Squirrels. They raid the nests of song birds eating their eggs and young
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