British Wage War on U.S. ‘Invaders’

LONDON —  Once again, dynamic and competitive visitors from the United States are facing British complaints that they are overfed, oversexed and over here.

Half a century ago, such good-natured grousing was aimed at tens of thousands of American GIs who came to help liberate a continent.

In these high-tech times, it is squirrels that rouse the English angst. Would you like to explain to a grandchild, or to the spirit of Beatrix Potter, that Squirrel Nutkin is extinct?

In scarcely more than a century, imported-from-America gray squirrels have toppled British red squirrels from a perch of treetop privilege they had enjoyed since the Ice Age. Now the British are fighting back, but it may be too late to save Squirrel Nutkin’s red kin in the island nation where he has been a beloved bedtime-tale hero for generations.

“It’s a war, make no mistake about it,” says Anthony Haslam of the private Country Landowners Assn. “The reds are cuddly woodland creatures. The grays are a pest: tree rats. We tell people to shoot them on sight, and that is what we are doing.”

Yes, passions run high in this tale of sex, violence and mystery in the squirrel kingdom. And there is also a powerful ecological message: Britain’s squirrel dilemma is a lesson in what happens when well-intentioned folk interfere with nature.

“We can’t be sure remedies will work; it’s an uphill struggle,” says conservationist Lisa Kerslake. “But we can’t just sit back and let the reds go. Once they are gone, they cannot be introduced in areas where there are grays, we know that.”

A century ago, when Queen Victoria reigned and Sherlock Holmes prowled London’s majestic parks in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, the squirrels there were red, as they still are across continental Europe. Today, however, every park squirrel in London is an intruder gray.

The grays are bigger, tougher victors in a quiet woodland battle for dominance and survival. The between-species struggle goes on all year but is being played out with fresh fervor these midwinter days.

“January is the best month in the squirrel calendar,” says Gina Oliver of the London Wildlife Trust, a private charity group. It is the peak period of mating chases, when males ritually pursue females through leafless trees and across frozen ground.

Cars are dangerous predators for love-besotted squirrels. Many will perish this month on the wrong side of that narrow line between ardor and road kill.

Once the mating ends and lovers return to their dreys, as squirrel nests are called, nature will further reinforce an alarming imbalance.

The grays are more prolific than the native reds, and they are tougher--better able to survive winter’s rigors. There are millions of grays by now, but conservationists say that only about 160,000 reds remain in shrinking pockets of the British Isles.

Steve Lowe, conservation manager for the Durham Wildlife Trust, has watched the northeastern county of Durham turn from red to gray. A decade ago, Lowe says, reds were about 60% of the squirrel population. Now it is about 85% gray.

In Northumberland, the next county north, government and voluntary agencies have banded together to block a gray tide that has been advancing two to three miles a year. They call their campaign Red Alert.

“When grays move in, the reds disappear within 10 to 15 years. We don’t know why. It’s a mystery, but it’s an inescapable fact,” Lowe says. “Around here the grays are seen as an alien threat. There is quite an undercurrent of feeling among people who are worried about losing a native.”

Disaster for the reds began innocently in 1876, when a squirrel fancier named Brucklehurst released a pair of imported grays in Cheshire, in western England. By 1892, grays had been released in 30 other sites around the country, including London’s Regents Park. Grays were subsequently re-exported from Britain to Ireland, South Africa and Australia, according to the Mammal Society.

Back when the sun never set on the British Empire, there was keen popular scientific interest in the wonders of the world beyond England: British ships brought strange plants and animals from distant shores in steady procession; many became welcome, by now familiar additions to the landscape and livestock.

Who was to know, but the gray squirrels were a colossal blunder. Reds and grays are of different species within the Sciuridae family (order Rodentia). They do not fight, and they avoid each other when possible. They cannot interbreed, but neither, hindsight makes plain, can the reds and grays live together.

The shy, red Sciurus vulgaris, which ranges widely across continental Europe, is slender, has tufted ears, weighs about 10 ounces and spends most of its time in trees.

The gray intruder is S. carolinensis. It is stocky, has short ears, weighs up to 1 1/2 pounds, is an inch or two longer than the reds and is frequently seen on the ground. The grays are the classic American East Coast peanut cadger. (The reds and grays should not be confused with the white-flecked brown California ground squirrel, S. beecheyi, which is found from Baja California to Oregon and carried bubonic plague to San Francisco in 1900.)

Zoologists now understand what escaped Victorian observers: There are major differences between the two species that may drive the native reds to extinction in Britain.

Reds are happiest in areas of conifer trees, eating cones and seeds high off the ground. They cannot easily digest acorns, notes Kerslake of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust.

The bigger grays are more aggressive and less discriminating feeders. They love acorns and are happiest among deciduous hardwoods, which make up the vast majority of woodlands in England. While the grays out-compete the reds, there is also a suspicion that they may carry a virus that does not affect them but can infect other squirrels.

“We became aware of the problem when it was too late. You only notice that the reds are going when you realize that you don’t see them as often,” says Durham’s Lowe.

By now, the grays are seen within the same country from starkly different perspectives. In red areas, they are the enemy. No quarter, says landowner Haslam: “The country is being overrun by the gray. Northumberland is the largest remaining area into which the gray has not infiltrated. But it is mounting a three-pronged attack. He is trying hard and he is succeeding. We must dispatch him.”

Northumberland aristocrat Lord Ridley says gray squirrel is tasty, although it takes a lot of them to make a decent meal. In Scotland, also under gray assault, the Duke of Buccleuch’s chief gamekeeper is inviting neighbors to sample gray squirrel at barbecues and in casseroles (with herbs and chanterelle mushrooms).

Elsewhere--in most of the country--grays are familiar, curious, approachable park and garden friends. The grays are any kid’s delight, if sometimes irksome to parents and park keepers because of the their penchant for stripping bark from young trees.

“Accepting the assumption that the public would not wish to eliminate the gray squirrel, even if it were possible, then we must also accept that the red squirrel will never return to its full natural range,” says a new report from the Joint Nature Conservancy, a forum for 15 conservation agencies in England, Wales and Scotland.

Red squirrels are a protected species under British law, but conservationists believe that passive defense cannot save them. In Northumberland, says Kerslake, there has been warm public response to a campaign to report sightings of reds and grays in areas where the squirrel population is now mixed.

Once populations have been pinpointed, reds are being fed and grays are being trapped for humane disposal. Farmers are being advised to plant trees that will be most hospitable to future generations of reds.

Britain’s consternation over how--and whether--to control a runaway imported species is echoed all over the world, says Peter Cotgreave at the Zoological Society of London.

“If it were possible to get rid of the grays, it would not be a mistake. But the realistic possibility is limited. No doubt we are right to protect the red, although for many people the gray is just as nice,” Cotgreave says. “The red is very common across Europe, so it will not go extinct if it vanishes from Britain--but it will be very sad.”

What is chilling to the defenders of the reds is that the gray advance may be quickening. In the besieged north, there have been reports of gray squirrels in small numbers spotted 40 miles from their last confirmed sighting.

In Durham, Lowe suspects that squirrel aficionados may once again be interfering with nature. He thinks that people are adopting grays as pets and that the squirrels then escape or are set free. The grays have been popularized, says Lowe, by a beer commercial in which a tough-guy gray squirrel completes a derring-do series of commando-like tasks to battle his way to a nut.

Friends of the reds can do nothing less than to fight back as determinedly, says Lowe: “Sure, we may be fiddling while Rome burns. It may be that what we do has no impact. But if we do nothing, then we are all guilty of letting a species go to extinction.”

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The Red vs. The Gray

Zoologists now understand what escaped Victorian observers: Major differences between these squirrel species may drive the native reds to extinction in Britain.

Sciurus vulgaris

The shy, red S. vulgaris , which ranges widely across continental Europe, is slender, has tufted ears, weighs about 10 ounces and spends most of its time in trees.

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Sciurus carolinensis

The gray intruder is S. carolinensis. It is stocky, has short ears, weighs up to 1 1/2 pounds, is an inch or two longer than the reds, and is frequently seen on the ground. It is more aggressive and eats a wider range of foods.