Exterminator who kills grey squirrels branded racist

I’m not shooting them for the colour of their fur, I’m trying to save a species, says volunteer ‘ranger’

A GREY squirrel exterminator helping to increase red population numbers claims he has been branded racist. Andrew Hodgkinson, a member of the Penrith and District Red Squirrel Group, a volunteer-led charity in Cumbria, is a “red squirrel ranger”, shooting grey squirrels to protect the rapidly declining native species.

He said: “We get called racist because we shoot the greys because they’re grey, not red. So it’s like we’re shooting them because of the colour of their fur, which it really isn’t. It’s crazy.

“I don’t think of it as anything that I should be celebrating or feeling exhilarated about. It’s a job.

“I know that doing this will benefit the red squirrels. Every grey squirrel down is a positive for the reds, definitely.”

The culling is accepted by many conservationists as a last-ditch attempt to save the reds, which they warn could be extinct in the UK within 35 years.

A national programme called Red Squirrels United is being spearheaded by The Wildlife Trusts, an umbrella group for 47 local organisations, and is supported by more than 30 conservation groups seeking a “volunteer army” of 5,000 people who will be trained to kill trapped grey squirrels with a blow to the head. It has been aided by £3 million in funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the EU Life programme, the European Union’s funding body for environmental projects.

However, the campaign has also proved controversial. More than 105,000 people have signed an anti-cull petition in which supporters champion grey squirrels and argue that people have no right to play God and choose which species live and die.

Signatories are urging The Wildlife Trusts to seek alternative ways to protect native reds. Since the Fifties, red squirrels have fallen from around 3.5 million to an estimated 140,000, most of which are in Scotland.

Greys were imported from America in the 19th-century, they infect reds with the squirrelpox virus and damage deciduous woodland by stripping bark.

Julie Bailey, a fellow Cumbria-based red squirrel enthusiast, says she and her husband Phil fell in love with the animals when they lived in their garden and used to tap on the window looking for food. But everything changed in December 2009 when a grey squirrel appeared in the garden.

“Within three weeks, I’d lost eight red squirrels to squirrelpox, a disease carried by the greys,” she said. “It’s just devastating.”

She joined the local red squirrel group and also shoots greys but admits that “pulling the trigger is not easy”.

She insists the deaths are not in vain, revealing that she and her husband take the tails off for fishermen, freeze the legs and use the meat to make squirrel curry, stews and burgers.