[eeyore]

the grey vs red thing has already been done to death and i'm reluctant to go there again - but the overlooked point here is that it is not about competition per se but because the grey carries the parapox virus to which the red has no imunity.

If they could come up with a workable orally administered parapox vacine for the red the two species could share habitat - but at the moment there isnt a workable vacine

you can see the problem in action at formby point where their used to be a red popultion - then some chucklehead introduced a single grey squirel and zap, two years later hardly any reds.

the issue with reds being controlled also isnt as easy ass portayed here - to get a licence to control a protected species you have to demonstrate that significant economic damage is being caused, and that all practicable non lethal methods (in this case sacrifical crops etc) have been tried first.

given that the bottom has dropped out of the confier market anyway it would be almost impossible to demonstrate that minor bark stripping by reds was causing significant loss, and i'm not aware of any forestry commision site that is carrying out red control.