22 Oct Bringing back the red Squirrel
For a long time here at Storrs Wood it has been our goal to one day reintroduce red squirrels back into our local area. Reintroducing the red Squirrels into this area is unfortunately not an overnight process, and will take many years of hard work and commitment. However, it is something we will hopefully one day achieve. The Red Squirrel was driven out of this area around 30-40 years ago and since then a vast amount of the grey squirrels have moved in. Unfortunately, up to 70 percent of grey squirrels harbor a virus witch is harmless to the Grey Squirrel, but extremely fatal to the red squirrel usually killing them within 2 weeks of contracting the virus. This means at this moment in time, with such a large amount of grey Squirrel in the area, it is highly unlikely red squirrels would survive if reintroduced at this point in time. Although lowering the population of grey squirrels would aid our goal, we will also need to create an environment the red squirrels can thrive in. This will involve planting conifer type trees in the woodland as it is the preferred habitat for the red squirrels.