Tuesday, 2 October 2012

Red Squirrels back on Tresco - are you sure?

I grudgingly moved in to the 21st century back in February with the acquisition of my first smartphone and subsequent signing up to Twitter. It has struck me in the last couple of weeks how social media is so far ahead of the game when it comes to spreading the word, be it badgers, buzzards or a deviant teacher eloping with a pupil to France. I knew about the latter about a week before it got any coverage on TV when the Twitter campaign about Megan's disappearance appeared on my account.

Anyway, to the point. One person I 'follow' has tweeted about an introduction (or is it a reintroduction) of Red Squirrels to Tresco on the Isles of Scilly. I believe that this is being aided by the Red Squirrel Survival Trust http://www.rsst.org.uk/ I am all in favour of protecting the Reds that remain by any legal means which the RSST seem well and truly behind - hurrah to that. However, I am slightly perturbed by the Tresco plan. The 'Diet' of Reds on the RSST website seems to infer that they are veggies. A quick Google search (admittedly of no scientific literature) points to countless references to them fancying a bit of meat on occasion. A disingenuous omission. Can you see where I am going with this? I fear that introducing a (potential) top predator on to a small island might not go down too well with the resident population of cup-nesting songbirds. I well recall the abundance of Song Thrushes and Dunnocks on my trips to the Scillies, wishing of course that one of them would turn out to be a Swainson's Thrush or an Alpine Accentor. If I was a Red and it was a bad seed year, I would fancy nothing more than a quick nibble on a delightful, pastel-blue dunnock egg. A reminder here that Song Thrush are on the red-list of Birds of Conservation Concern and Dunnocks are Amber-listed. Or can you imagine the anger from the massed ranks of twitchers on the 16th October 2019 when a near-to-death Black-billed Cuckoo has the coup-de-grace administered by a Red Squirrel!

I was also slightly alarmed to read that the RSST wishes to pursue their work "with projects that minimise bureaucracy." Conservation organisations have to jump through an inordinate amount of consents, permissions and regulations in order to carry out their work. No doubt this can be frustrating at times, but needs must. Admittedly, I don't know the protocol for (re)introductions, but there must be a fairly lengthy list.

I think that this particular effort is mere tokenism and efforts are better spent where Reds remain. It also remains to see if this story dies on its backside or gains some thought-provoking momentum on the twitter-sphere. That is down to you.

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