The pine marten is a skilled predator of grey squirrels and was once the second most common carnivore in Britain but humans have decimated them, allowing grey populations to boom.2 Owls sometimes hunt squirrels when times are hard but grey squirrels have few predators in the UK.3 Cats, dogs, foxes, minks and stoats will all try to catch squirrels but not enough to threaten their numbers. In North America it’s a different story, with coyotes, snakes, bobcats and raccoons all hunting squirrels.3 The main reason for grey squirrel mortality in the UK is food scarcity when seed crops fail.

Buzzards and goshawks are squirrel eaters but they go for the easier-to-catch red squirrels who spend most of their time in trees while greys spend more time on the ground.3

The greys’ success has come about at the same time as red squirrel numbers have declined. There are now an estimated 2.5 million grey squirrels and just 140,000 red squirrels across the UK.4 Many people have seen a cause and effect correlation here and the ‘guilty’ greys have been targeted in brutal culls in a misguided attempt to boost red squirrel numbers.

The bird-shooting industry is also keen to kill greys because they eat a bit of the grain laid down to keep pheasants in one area until shooting season begins. The irony is astounding – the shooting industry claims that they kill grey squirrels because they’re not native and yet they release over 57 million non-native pheasants (mostly) every year into Britain’s countryside, many of whom go on to cause damage to native wildlife.6 The bird shooting industry doesn’t just kill squirrels but also foxes, hedgehogs, birds of prey or anything else they think might snaffle pheasant eggs or chicks – often when it’s illegal to do so!7 It’s an industry based entirely upon killing and should have no authority to talk about culling grey squirrels as conservation.

The timber industry also wants to see grey squirrels eradicated because they cause a bit of damage to trees. Half of all ancient woodlands have been destroyed since the end of World War Two, not because of grey squirrels but us. Any damage by grey squirrels is tiny in comparison to the destruction of trees at our hands.8 It has helped to make Britain one of the ‘most nature-depleted countries in the world’ and has damaged many species along with red squirrels.9 We blame grey squirrels for our own vandalism. 

Landowners, timber owners and bird shooters are all up in arms against the greys, quite literally, in the name of protecting the native red squirrel. Some conservationist charities such as The Wildlife Trusts have joined the onslaught, helping to perpetuate the myth that killing grey squirrels helps red squirrels with no evidence that the cull actually works.10

Text has been reproduced (with a few minor alterations), with permission kindly given by:  

https://viva.org.uk/animals/other-animals/squirrels/