Released Oct. 9, 2007
AUBURN UNIVERSITY, Ala. -- Rupert Redesdale loathes eastern gray squirrels to the point that he would like to exterminate all of them — all for the sake of making his beloved Britain more hospitable to indigenous red squirrels.
Eastern gray squirrels, enthusiastically imported from America more than a century ago, have been steadily overrunning the more tepid red squirrel’s terrain for decades — to the point that the red squirrels, much like their human British counterparts at Dunkirk, are hanging on by a mere thread.
Their numbers have dwindled to a mere 160,000, by some estimates, while the numbers of gray squirrels abound at more than 2 million. Redesdale, a member of the British House of Lords, and other red squirrel proponents have pleaded with the government to do something. Barring concerted action, they fear, the reds will be completely overrun within a decade, according to an article published earlier this week in The New York Times Magazine.
Like so many other examples of invasive species, the plight of the red squirrels speaks volumes about the unintended effects of introducing a species from one corner of the world to another, according to Jim Armstrong, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System wildlife specialist and Auburn University professor of forestry and wildlife sciences.
Caged gray squirrels were once the rage among aristocratic Britons, prized for many of the same traits associated with their human Yankee counterparts — extroversion mixed with enterprising spunk. But like many other imported exotic pets, the grays grew less exotic over time. Britons eventually grew bored with them, finally releasing many of these rodents into the wild, where these transplanted Yanks then began putting their extroversion and spunk to good use taming a new frontier.
And, as events soon proved, the squirrels possessed a number of advantages over the native reds. Among these advantages: in addition to stronger social traits is a preference that the reds lack for newly fallen acorns and a willingness to cross open terrain. And even though the grays can’t mate with red females, they often scare away red males who try.
Britons seem more determined than ever to revive the reds. But, again, like so many other challenges associated with invasive species, the question boils down to how.
“Managing invasive species really depends on how bad people want to get rid of them,” Armstrong says. “And with intensive effort, it may even be possible to control them.”
But for this to work there has to be a total buy-in by the public.
“You typically have to embrace a zero tolerance standard for effective control to occur,” he says.
And that’s precisely where the problem arises, Armstrong says. Just as many people conclude that they’ve reached the absolute last straw with these pesky animals and begin organizing, they often discover that just as many people want to keep them. Gray squirrels, it seems, are no exception.
Redesdale and his eager sidekick, Paul Parker, a professional pest controller, spend much of their free time trapping eastern grays and eliminating them. As he sees it, there is no other way to contain the squirrel’s spread.
On the other hand, many Britons, particularly park enthusiasts, have warmed to the inquisitive, gregarious nature of the grays.
“It’s the problem we always run into when dealing with invasive animal species,” Amstrong says, citing the feral pig in the South as a prime example.
Plenty of landowners would readily exterminate these pigs with the same vengeance Redesdale employs with gray squirrels. On the other hand, many hunters, who value the pigs for their sporting traits, take an entirely different view.
“When you get a divided public as we do here with the feral pigs, management becomes very difficult,” Armstrong says.
Curiously, some Britons have even admitted that the gray squirrels have clouded their views of Americans. But as Armstrong stresses, this is not a one-way street. For centuries, Americans have been dealing with a similar invasive problem involving English sparrows, which, like the gray squirrel, was introduced here with the most innocent of intentions.
“It was viewed as an ornamental species purely for enjoyment,” Armstrong says. “People had no idea of the environmental problems that it eventually would cause.”
Much like the gray squirrels, efforts have been taken through the years to control their numbers, though to no avail.
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http://www.aces.edu/department/extcomm/npa/daily/archives/003353.php
Contact: Jim Langcuster, langcjc@auburn.edu
