Alert to save besieged squirrel: Campaign aims to improve habitats for a species in decline

AN ATTEMPT to save the red squirrel from extinction in England was launched yesterday in Cumbria where the animals, besieged by grey squirrels, are holding out. A body called Red Alert has been formed to alter the environment to favour red squirrels.

Landowners, MPs and local authority officials met at Levens Hall, near Milnthorpe, Cumbria, to hear from Red Alert how they could save the animal, which through the influence of children's books, has endeared itself to generations of Britons.

The red squirrel will be extinct in Britain within 20 years if humans do not intervene to save it, Dr Will Williams, chairman of the technical working group at Red Alert, said. Greedy greys ate hazelnuts and other fruits and seeds before they were ripe, leaving nothing for the more discriminating reds.

Red Alert is sponsored by NPI, one of the largest pension companies in the UK, which uses the red squirrel as an emblem because it is a sensible saver of nuts.

Expertise for Red Alert's conservation programme comes from the Forestry Authority and English Nature. The National Trust, which has about 7,000 acres of woodland in Cumbria inhabited by red squirrels, is also backing the campaign.

The red squirrel was one of Beatrix Potter's best-loved animals and the trust to which she bequeathed land in the Lake District could not stand by and watch the animal disappear.

Observations made in woodland at Formby in Merseyside and Thetford Forest in East Anglia, has shown that red squirrels do well in these areas because they contain a large proportion of Scots pine, lodge pole pine or Norway spruce, which provide the animals with pine nuts.

Red squirrels do not thrive in oak forests because they cannot digest acorns as well as the grey squirrel. However, it has been discovered recently that red squirrels can eat yew berries, hawthorn berries, rosehips, rowan and ash seeds, which the greys cannot eat or do not like so much.

Using these preferences, the Forestry Authority is launching a scheme of woodland management which will favour red squirrels. Owners of woods in suitable areas of Cumbria and Lancashire will be paid pounds 35 to pounds 40 per hectare to create more diverse woods. Landowners will also be encouraged to put up hoppers which feed the red squirrels, but jettison the heavier greys. The Red Alert programme also includes 'control' of the grey squirrels, which means shooting or poisoning them.