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Wales on reds alert
CAMPAIGNERS are calling for a squirrel-pox vaccine after almost 80% of the red-squirrel population of Gwynedd, north Wales, was wiped out by an outbreak last year.
A petition, which at the time of writing had more than 11,000 signatures, has called for the Welsh government to commit to funding research into a vaccine, such as the one under development by the Moredun Research Institute from 2010–13. The petition also warns that ‘it is only a matter of time before the infection is spread across the Menai Strait and onto Anglesey’, which is where the majority of the Welsh red-squirrel population lives. ‘When we started on Anglesey, we only had 40 [red squirrels], now we’ve got about 800, potentially a few more,’ says Craig Shuttleworth, who created the petition and is also an honorary research fellow at Bangor University. ‘But they are under threat, a massive threat.’
Squirrel pox is a virus that can spread easily in grey-squirrel populations, but is ultimately harmless to them. It is, however, fatal to red squirrels and has played a large part in wiping out the native red population across England and Wales in favour of their invasive grey
