Red squirrels have been dropping in number not just from hunting but because we have been destroying their homes with mass deforestation.2 The rise of grey squirrel populations does not necessarily correlate with the drop in red squirrels. In the 1950s, there were millions of reds when greys were already well established. Now, there are only 140,000 reds left.3 The culprit is loss of habitat, which greys have managed to adapt better to.

Red squirrels have gone from being pests to a symbol of Britain’s wildlife when people decided their pointy ears, little hands and lovely fur were cute. It obscures the fact that we have driven their numbers into the ground. 

Instead of leaving nature alone, the hatred that was harboured towards reds has been transferred to greys. It’s similar to the way cattle farmers wrongly blamed badgers for bovine tuberculosis (bTB) – leading to 100,000 badgers being killed, millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money wasted and barely any reduction in bTB. One cull follows another despite there being little evidence to support culling as a means of managing populations.4 In fact, culls can increase localised density of grey squirrels!4

The main cause (up to 94%) of unnatural deaths in red squirrel population in the UK was human activity.5

In the UK there are vast areas of forests felled in the areas of common occurrence of red squirrels even in breeding seasons which causes every year deaths of hundreds if not thousands of young red squirrels completely dependent on their mothers.5

During forest clearing operations in an area with red squirrels present, the Forestry Commission does not require leaving – even for a few months – so called "woodland corridors", which give animals a chance to move to another place after habitat destruction. Such forestry practices lead to a significant decline in red squirrel populations, and very often lead to local extinction (Lurz et al. 1998). These unfavourable forestry practices – in use in the UK for many decades – are common today and not only in profit-focused commercial woodlands.6

As the scientific research shows, red squirrels are very vulnerable to habitat fragmentation.7,8,9,10,11 

They are also definitely less "mobile" than grey squirrels who in adverse conditions can travel even several miles looking for a suitable habitat – such practices of tree felling in fact accelerate the spread of grey squirrels into new areas.

Scientists and environmentalists agree that loss of habitat availability and quality is one of the main reasons for the significant red squirrel population decline in the UK.11,12,13,14.