Rose-tinted, fluffy-rimmed spectacles, anyone?
Just as one man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist, one man's cute, fluffy endangered species is another's vermin. Last week Prince Charles called for an eradication drive against the evil grey squirrel, an "invasive" species imported from North America which has driven the native red squirrel out of virtually all of England. This debate has been rumbling for a couple of weeks, an interesting diversion from the expenses scandal certainly, but is the eradication worth doing?
A couple of weeks ago, the Vanessa Feltz talk show told us of some guy who had killed dozens of squirrels a week for several years, or something like that. I emailed the show, saying I hoped he was protecting a particular habitat, because if he was being paid out of public money, he was wasting it. The reason is that back in the days when red squirrels were just called squirrels because they were the only species, they were considered as vermin. It was possible to get licences to shoot them well into the 1970s. In most of Europe, they are still the only species (the scientific name Sciurus vulgaris, or common squirrel, reflects this), although greys were introduced in Italy and have spread, because eradication was held up by legal challenges from the usual misguided animal rights types. Now, they are considered a protected species in the UK.
There are actually hundreds of thousands of greys in the UK, and I don't dispute that they are vermin any more than foxes are vermin; but we are not going on a big fox eradication drive, are we? I haven't seen the fox busters round here, and we have plenty of them. Squirrels can get into your house and gnaw through your cables and insulation, just like mice or any other rodent. If you've got them in your house, getting rid of them is a necessity. Having them live in the trees in your neighbourhood is just a bit annoying, as when they take over your bird tables so that the birds can't get to them.
The reason greys have taken over is that they are basically a superior species: they are bigger and are resistant to a disease, squirrel pox, which kills reds. Getting rid of squirrels from a particular area may be a good thing; what's the point of getting rid of them to introduce another species of vermin? I notice that Charlie wants landowners to do the job, which begs the question of who will pay for getting rid of the urban ones, because if you don't deal with both, they will just spread back into the rural areas again.
