'Promising' plan to use contraceptives to cut UK grey squirrel numbers

ITV News' Rhys Williams reports on the progress of the plan to use oral contraceptives to control grey squirrel populations in the UK

A scheme to give grey squirrels contraception in an attempt to cut their numbers and help their dwindling red cousins is producing hopeful results, researchers have said.

Environment minister Lord Benyon described invasive grey squirrels as “pests” who cause “untold damage in the British countryside”.

He said a new way could be found to deal with them through work being done by the UK Squirrel Accord (UKSA) and the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha).

Lord Benyon said that “important research on oral contraception shows promising signs that could help to eradicate the grey squirrel in the UK in a non-lethal way, as well as helping to recover our beloved red squirrel”.

UKSA-funded laboratory trials have been looking into an oral contraceptive as a non-lethal way to manage grey squirrels along with special feeding sites that can only be accessed by them.

Vital progress has been made in the effort to find ways to isolate the squirrels so they may then be able to take the contraceptive, researchers say, but it is not currently deployed in the wild outside of a few test zones.

Apha says it has a feeder with a weighted door that excludes most other smaller weaker wildlife while allowing more than 70% of local grey squirrel populations to get in and eat from them.

Apha is testing different methods of keeping red squirrels out of the feeders, so contraceptives could be used in areas where there are both types of squirrels.

Gideon Henderson, the chief scientific adviser at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said the research "will help red squirrels – native to the UK – expand back into their natural habitats, as well as protecting UK woodland and increasing biodiversity".

UKSA now has the funds to cover the research of the grey squirrel fertility control project.

Grey squirrels cause damage to woodlands by stripping bark from young trees aged between 10-50 years.

They are also one of the main reasons for the local extinctions of red squirrels in large areas of the UK.

The squirrels target trees like oaks which are ecologically important because they support so many other species.

There is an estimated three million greys in the UK but they are classed as an invasive species.

They were introduced to the UK more than a 100 years ago after being transported from their home in the United States.

Lord Kinnoull, chair of the UK Squirrel Accord and Red Squirrel Survival Trust, said: “This is a vital milestone on the road to enabling forestry to play fully its part in the climate battle, while preserving our native broadleaf trees and allowing our native red squirrels to return.”

Rebecca Isted, of the Forestry Commission, said she was “optimistic these trials could eventually lead to a significant change of approach in the management of these animals”.

She added that the Forestry Commission is updating the Government’s Grey Squirrel Action Plan, and will later set out its aims to better understand and manage the negative impacts of grey squirrels.