Are grey squirrels unjustly persecuted?

Further to the letters in defence of grey squirrels, I notice the correspondents were both writing from large cities. In more rural areas, grey squirrels are designated as pests with good reason. It is not because they are immigrants or merely more adaptable than the native reds — they cause vast amounts of damage to woodlands by gnawing bark and eating growing shoots of young trees. they are also one of the main predators of birds’ eggs, and they carry a disease called squirrel pox which kills the majority of reds once their territory is invaded by greys. In gardens they cause a lot of destruction by digging bulbs out of pots, taking the buds off flowers and eating fruit. there are double standards at work here — would rats have more defenders if they had cute fluffy tails? I hope the restaurant in London which put squirrels on the menu is doing a roaring trade!

Lorene Preston, Kings Langley, Herts. POOR Tufty was persecuted for years by Squirrel Clubs — they shot thousands of squirrels every year up until the late Sixties. Then came modern agriculture — large open fields with no hedges and chemicals such as DDT and organochlorines. The grey squirrels eat the same diet as reds, but they live at much greater densities. Add to this the squirrel pox virus that the greys carry and the reds do not stand a chance. To say the Reds are abundant in pine forests is not true. The greys have taken over Thetford Forest (Norfolk) since 1980. All squirrels will ring bark trees and eat bird’s eggs and fledglings, but the greys, being more aggressive and at a greater density, do far more damage.