Quote:
Originally Posted by Fritillary  "But for 43 years, from 1903, there was an active effort on estates across the Highlands to trap, shoot and kill reds.
By 1946, the Highland Squirrel Club had killed 102,900 squirrels and paid out £1,504 in bounties.
Tails were submitted as proof of kills.
Reds were extinct, or on the brink of extinction, in the Highlands by the 1800s because of a loss of woodland habitat.
In 1844, Lady Lovat of Beaufort Estate near Beauly, succeeded in getting the government to re-introduce the squirrels to the Highlands.
By the 1900s, the squirrels had spread from the boundaries of the estates where they were released and were blamed for causing damage to Scots pine and other conifers. |
This information is of course correct, but is so often obfiscated by those organisations who would have us believe that the demise of the red squirrel is solely or largely due to the spread of the grey squirrel.
Red squirrels are still being controlled by trapping under licence, by foresters (Forestry Commission & private estates), who only have to show that they are 'causing economic damage' by stripping bark from conifers, despite their 'protected' status.
Red squirrels were 're-introduced' to Scotland (in South Scotland mainly from England, and in the north mainly from Scandinavia), so although numbers have increased steadily the overall population
still struggles to recover from a human-induced extinction, whilst the favoured conifer habitat of the reds continues to be eroded faster than it is replaced.