Volunteers create new picture of red squirrels' range in Cumbria (From The Westmorland Gazette)
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Volunteers create new picture of red squirrels' range in Cumbria
8:58am Friday 13th July 2012 in News
MORE than 1,200 hours of work by volunteers and staff has created a new picture of the native red squirrels’ geographical range in northern England.
Volunteers and staff from the Red Squirrels Northern England (RSNE) conservation partnership, including Cumbria Wildlife Trust, have visited 239 woodlands to establish which species of squirrels are living in them.
In Cumbria there were 108 locations monitored. Of these, red squirrels were seen in 71 woods, grey squirrels in 39 and at 14 neither species were seen. This has been hailed as an excellent result by Cumbria’s Red Squirrels Officer for RSNE, Simon O’Hare.
“This is a tremendous result for Cumbria and shows just how well distributed red squirrels are in the county,” said Mr O’Hare.
“Reds were present in all of the designated strongholds around Whinlatter, Whinfell, Thirlmere and Greystoke where we would expect to find them, but results also show that reds can found right across the wider landscape.”
Mr O’Hare added that reds had been spotted on the West Coast - an area not included in the original network of red squirrel reserves The monitoring programme will be repeated this autumn and bi-annually in future years.
