Red Squirrels: Potential Extinction

Debate between Simon Hart and Bob Seely

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) on securing this important debate. It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and thank you for interpreting the rules generously enough to allow me to speak. I will be very brief, but I think the debate would benefit from having an opinion from the Isle of Wight, where we have a sizeable red squirrel population.

As we have heard, red squirrels are the only squirrel native to the British Isles. They are disappearing from the mainland at an alarming rate, having been replaced by the American grey squirrel. Looking at a map of England, what is truly upsetting for people who love the reds, as I do, is that there are only two red squirrel hot spots south of the Mersey: one is in Anglesey, of which the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) just spoke; the other is on the Isle of Wight.

Out of a red squirrel population of 140,000 in the United Kingdom, between 3,000 and 3,500 at its height are on the Isle of Wight. We know that thanks to excellent work done by the Wight Squirrel Project and the Isle of Wight Red Squirrel Trust. We also produce some fantastic T-shirts and hoodies with red squirrels holding up a 30 mph speed limit sign, like those my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) mentioned. I have, on a couple of occasions in the last few years, seen the bodies of red squirrels on the road. It always angers me when they wind up dead on the road, because we do not have enough of them.

The Isle of Wight is a stronghold for red squirrels because we are an island. The Solent is thankfully a barrier to grey squirrels. I was told recently—I am not sure whether it is an urban myth—that we once turned back a ferry, not because it had mainlanders on it, who are very welcome to visit, but because there was a grey squirrel on it. The ferry was held up, we found the grey squirrel, and it got off—it probably did not have a ticket anyway. We do not want greys on the Isle of Wight. As we know, it takes only one grey to spread disease among the population of reds. It is illegal to bring a grey squirrel into red squirrel territory and the penalty is two years’ imprisonment or a £5,000 fine.

Red squirrels are truly beautiful animals. About five years ago, I was living in an even more remote place than I am now. It was a mile and a half down a single-track lane, and as I drove back in the evening buzzards would fly overhead, and badgers and the occasional red squirrel would run across the road. I drove very slowly. A red squirrel came and sat on my porch once and ate some nuts. It was no further away from me than my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed is now. It was the most beautiful and special animal, and we need to ensure that we protect their habitats.

The Island is about 10% woodland, and that is increasing slowly. What we have not done, and what we probably need to do nationally, is ensure that where possible we link woodland environments together to enable the reds to have greater space in which to flourish and reproduce, because reds have a lower living density than grey squirrels. They need more woodland and undergrowth to support the same population, because they are slightly more solitary animals than grey squirrels.

We do not have many deer on the Isle of Wight, so I think an environmental expert would say that our understory trees and our young shoots are in better condition than those in parts of Britain with a deer population that tends to eat shoots and harm the growth of understory trees. However, I would be delighted to hear from the Minister what more the Government can do to support projects to reforest parts of the United Kingdom with broadleaf trees—not conifers, which acidify the soil and do not do enough to support insect life, bird life, and red squirrel and other mammal life.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I have been listening to the points made by my hon. Friend and others about the connection between red squirrels and greys, red squirrels and predators, and red squirrels and trees. There is a connection between all those different elements of wildlife management. We have some red squirrels on the island of Caldey, in my patch. In order to get them there, we had to eradicate rats, which led to a revival in ground-nesting birds. Is not the point that the Government should take a holistic approach—not picking on one species and one method of enhancing or controlling it, but looking at wildlife, and the way in which we manage it, in the round to make it a success?