Posted on 05/22/2008 6:05:40 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
So much of England seemed strangely, even eerily familiar.
Some of that may have been psychological; one of the reasons I'd come to the island was to see and smell and walk the rolling green hills of the English Midlands where my ancestors lived for who-knows-how-many generations and from which, 400 years ago, one of them gathered his family and crossed the Atlantic for a new life in The New World.
Part of it certainly was the sight of so many everyday "American" symbols — Burger King, McDonald's, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Coke, Pepsi and Marlboro.
Even the language was, for the most part, relatively comprehensible.
But one of the familiar sights I regularly saw over a couple of weeks of roaming a big chunk of England earlier this month echoed an uncomfortable and all-too-familiar message.
The trigger was squirrels. Gray squirrels. The same dirt-common "cat" squirrels I grew up hunting in East Texas creek bottoms and for which I've always had a great affection.
They're everywhere
The first "grey" squirrel (as the English spell it) I saw in Britain was in a small park near downtown London. Then I saw several in a huge park not far from the city, and a bunch in the Tower of London complex.
They were all over the grounds of a sprawling hotel in Buxton, and in the trees along a nearby stream. They scampered and begged for handouts around the old Roman wall and the abbey ruins of York.
They were in the Lake District and even in the copses of woodlands surrounding so many of the ancient burial mounds near Stonehenge.
Had I been a tad more ignorant, the sight of all these gray squirrels might have made me smile and feel a bit more at home in this foreign homeland.
But seeing them just made me uneasy.
They were constant reminders of the horrible toll non-native species so often have on native wildlife and natural systems and our ethically criminal complicity in facilitating these tragedies.
Gray squirrels don't belong in England. And, like so many other "invasive" species, these transplanted natives of North America's east and southeast have inflicted serious and severe damage on native wildlife.
Because of gray squirrels, England's native red squirrels are quickly vanishing.
Came over in 19th century
Gray squirrels were first brought to England in the late 1800s. Some sources indicate the London Zoo released the first of these North American aboreal rodents in about 1876.
Other sources cite multiple releases of gray squirrels across England during the 1920s as the genesis of the population.
However and whenever and for whatever reasons they were unleashed on England, they quickly began taking over.
As with many invasives, gray squirrels found few natural enemies in their new home. They were bigger and more aggressive and could eat a more varied diet than their red English cousins.
Also, it seems that these North American gray squirrels readily carry and transmit a parapovirus (generally called "squirrel pox") to which the grays were immune but which is deadly to the native red squirrels.
The gray squirrels thrived, displacing England's native red squirrels.
Today, England's native red squirrels, the subject of much folklore and symbolism and often used in folk tales and childrens' books, are sliding toward extinction. Gray squirrels are shoving them off that cliff.
Over the past 60 years, the once-ubiquitous red squirrels have disappeared from southern England. Gray squirrels muscled them out.
Red squirrels take a hit
Red squirrel populations have declined drastically across the whole of England, with remnant populations holding on in the north of the country and in parts of Scotland.
Recent estimates are that England is now home to 2.5 million alien gray squirrels. The native red squirrel population is down to fewer than 140,000.
The gray squirrels' threat to native wildlife in the United Kingdom as well as mainland Europe is considered so serious that The World Conservation Union's lists the species on its "100 World's Worst Invasive Alien Species"
The Brits — some of them, at least — are trying to address the issue.
But intense, persistent lethal control of gray squirrels — the only method that stands even the slightest chance of stemming the tidal wave of American bushytails and saving the red-furred natives — makes a lot of the British public squeamish.
They are, after all, quite the civilized and non-violent society. (Well, except for a good percentage of the soccer fans.) And while many Brits understand the need for concerted shooting or trapping or even poisoning of gray squirrels, they aren't very keen on the idea. So control programs languish.
And even if they cranked up a serious effort to rid the nation of gray squirrels, they would not be able to accomplish the task. Too many gray squirrels. The genie is out of the bottle.
The result, it seems, is that England's red squirrels are doomed.
The sad and tragic and ultimately horribly depressing moral of this Norman Conquest of England's native squirrels by invading gray squirrels is that it is just one of hundreds of such events.
Invasive species are inflicting horrendous tolls on native wildlife and natural systems across the world.
Pythons on the prowl
Back in Texas after the English holiday, I poured through a bunch of notes, mail and e-mails, newspapers and Web sites, catching up on news.
There were stories on the invasion of the Houston area by a new, invasive species of ant. Great. As if fire ants weren't enough.
Another piece noted that the population of pythons (mostly Burmese pythons) in South Florida has grown to an estimated 30,000. And, scientists noted, the non-native snakes, which can grow to more than 15 feet in length and weigh more than 150 pounds, are spreading.
The pythons, which are having a huge detrimental impact on native wildlife in South Florida, are almost certain to spread across the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Coast. Basically, scientists found, pythons can live and reproduce just about anywhere our native alligators live. It's a matter of time until self-sustaining populations of pythons can be found from Texas to North Carolina.
Too little, too late
A recent release from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department announced the agency had received a grant of $425,000 to combat spread of "nuisance aquatic vegetation." The money will be focused on control efforts aimed at giant salvinia, hydrilla and water hyacinth, three non-native, invasive plant species that have smothered the life from native aquatic systems.
It could be $425 million, and it still would not be enough to rid Texas of the plague of invasive plants.
It's gray squirrels in England. In Texas, it's feral hogs and fire ants, salt cedar and Chinese tallow, salvinia and phragmites, Formosan termites and, soon enough, it appears, Burmese pythons.
It's all too familiar. You'd think we'd learn.
Just ask Mike “Popcorn Maker” Huckabee...
Somebody just needs to start a “Squirrel & Chips” franchise...
Red Squirrels, Grey/Gray Squirrels... I thought we weren’t suppose to judges based on color.
Really, there is no place in the modern world for this kind of xenophobic thinking.
I will say that a squirrel is a tough fight for a cat. A squirrel tore up my Lab's nose (but died instantly thereafter and was paraded all over the lawn like a gladiator's trophy.) The only cat I know that routinely killed squirrels was my parents' 15 pound Lilac Point Siamese - but she was a stone cold killer, not a wuss like the Siamese in the video.
Unfortunately, the neighbors have cats that found a source of fresh meat. Periodically, I see a tail heading through the tall grasses, and then a return with a mouthful of bird. I run them off (cats) when I can.
I have lots of squirrels, as well, but the cats are too slow, or this is easier! The squirrels just make my dalmation go crazy!
We’ll lend ‘em some red squirrels from the American Midwest. They’re big and tough, and ain’t going to be intimidated by no gray.
In my hometown of Omaha, there are almost exclusively reds. Cross the Missouri River into Council Bluffs, IA and you’ll find blacks. You almost never see the black ones in Omaha. I figure the reds are too big and mean.
;-)
Not to worry. The red squirrels will evolve their way out of it.
In Ontario there are black squirrels.
1. Put your feeders up high if you haven't already.
2. Make sure the feeders have an adequate perch for the birds.
3. Clear low brush and tall grass for about a 10' circle under the base of your feeders.
4. Leave nearby tall bushes and low tree branches intact so that birds have a place to fly with the seeds to crack them open above the reach of the cats.
Those measures keep the birds at our feeders fairly safe from cats -- and the dogs get the squirrels and the chipmunks (and they scare the @!*&*&^ out of the cats). Since they're retrievers they are trained not to crunch up the birdies -- even the ones that hit the windows in the house are brought to me without so much as a feather mussed, and we're able to save about half of them.
Your last observation is the very reason I do little about it. Birds are STUPID (tweetie excepted!)! I don't care for cats, but you have to admit they are good hunters!
I wondered the same thing, and a fellow FReeper said:
Start Here-> HTML Sandbox
Although some birds are monumentally stupid - mallards or chickens for example - some birds are pretty smart. Crows and chickadees seem particularly sharp. Most of the birds that hit our glass are finches, with the occasional tufted titmouse and common thrush. Never seen a chickadee hit the glass.
I figure since I set the table for them near the glass and thus attracted them to the hazard, I need to try to keep them from hitting it - I have suncatchers, ribbons, and so forth in the kitchen windows to give them a fighting chance to slow down and perceive the barrier. Same reason I keep the ground clear under the feeders -- sort of an adjustment for creating the danger in the first place.
I’m told that the black squirrels here are displacing the greys.
“Black Squirrels” are actually melanistic Grey Squirrels who carry a recessive gene that turns their color. This is why you will find the Greys giving birth to one black out of the litter on many occassions. I never saw a melanistic squirrel, however, until I moved to the Bronx.
bflr = bump for later reading
I have noticed a marked increase in the population of Black squirrels in the past twenty years, they are probably 10% of all squirrels I see now. I heard that they are from Germany originally but I am not sure as to the validity of that story.
Bingo. They're only "invasive" species when their undesireable effects outweigh their benefits. I've been in a few conversations in the past year or two where people were wringing their hands and doomsaying over the apparently unexplained demise of numerous beehives. When I've stated that honeybees aren't even native to the American continent and were themselves an, "invasive" species, brought over by early colonists, I'm called a liar.
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