The 6th International Colloquium on Arboreal Squirrels will be held in Kyoto City, Japan, from 4th to 8th February, 2012. The colloquium is held every 3 years; previous veues have been U.S.A (1994), U.S.A. (2000), England (2003), India (2006), and Canada (2009). These meetings cover any aspect of the biology of tree and flying squirrels from all over [...]
The recent launch of the of the European funded ES-SQUARE project in Italy to protect the native red squirrel from the invading grey squirrel could not have come sooner (see news item dated July 25th 2011). A paper published in 2010 in Hystrix, The Italian Journal of Mammalogy about the situation in Italy clearly shows that the [...]
Level 3, which provides telecommunications services, has reported that grey squirrels cause 17 percent of the damage to their fiber optic network. This is a reduction on last year’s 28% damage resulting from the fitting of cable guards. The reasons why they cause so much damage to cables is unclear.
Elena Oban and colleagues have detected a poxvirus in a red squirrel road casualty from north-east Spain. The squirrel had many haematomas in its body, and skin lesions on its ear tips, tail and feet, but not on the eyelids or mouth as found with Squirrel poxvirus (SQPV) infection in red squirrels in the UK. Preliminary analysis suggest it is an orthopoxirus, [...]
The Countryside Council for Wales have released new conservation plans for red squirrels in Wales including: (1) to identify and monitor populations of red squirrels, including surveying all sites with records of red squirrels in the last 10 years, and monitoring focal sites; (2) to prepare and implement red squirrel management plans for focal sites; (3) to [...]
An independently-owned Budgens grocery store in North London has started the sale of grey squirrel meat sourced from the County of Essex. However, this has been criticised by opponents such as VIVA – Vegetarians Voice for Animals – saying that this is a barbaric and needless cull and what gruesome product will be next to grace our food aisles, [...]
An attractive piebald grey squirrel, with a dark, russet head, silver white back and sides and grey tail was photographed by Dennis Hawker feeding on a bird table in Somerset, England in June 2010 – the photograph has been placed in the Gallery. Apparently, the squirrel has been a regular visitor to the garden during the summer. It would [...]
In July, a man was given a 6 months conditional discharge from Burton-upon-Trent Magistrates’ Court in Staffordshire, Central England and ordered to pay £1,547 to cover investigation and legal fees incurred by the Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) for killing a grey squirrel. The man had trapped the squirrel in [...]
Seeing how a grey squirrel escaping ‘death by car’, Natalie Angier recently wrote a piece in the New York Times about the fascination that these animals have for biologists in USA.
This is the headline of a BBC News article (reported on 16th February 2010) that arises from the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels (SSRS) conference held recently in Perth. For example, there are signs of a revival of red squirrels in parts of NE Scotland and it is believed that controlling the grey squirrel intruders is having a [...]