Jake, grey squirrels, rabbits and moles in conservation

Jake, the trusty ageing doggy companion, disappears again. Bill explains the ambiguous roles of grey squirrels, rabbits and moles in a conservation environment.

Mole emerging from hole. photo Beeki

Extract from reading by Chris Thomas, of chapter 7 from Route and Branch by Bill Clark, former Wandlebury warden. Full recording here:
https://archive.org/download/jake-squirrels-rabbits-moles/Ch7e-Jakes-passing-greys-squirrels-rabbits-moles.mp3

...one Sunday our neighbouring farmer called to say, a couple of injured pheasants were in a nearby wood. I took nine year old Jake, and he joyfully romped through the thick ivy undergrowth, bringing me the first – dead and cold – within minutes, and sped off to find the other. Suddenly all went quiet. I circled the quarter acre patch of thick bramble and ivy, whistling and calling, determined the old rogue wouldn’t get away this time. Finally, deciding he had evaded me somehow, I turned to leave, but noticed a splash of white. I struggled through the waist high growth, and picked up an unconscious Jake, and carried him out. Laying him down, I ran to get my car, but after a hundred yards or so I looked back, to see him on his feet, walking unsteadily towards me.
Luckily my neighbour Dr Larry Owen, of the
Cambridge Veterinarian College, was at home. Larry ran his hands over him, and listened to his heart. ‘I think the old fellow has suffered a heart attack,’ he said, ‘keep him warm, and don’t let him exercise. Bring him to the surgery tomorrow and we will have a proper look at him.’ A still subdued Jake walked with me into the surgery the following day...

...I have long regarded the grey squirrel as a tree rat with a pretty tail, and have always been aware of their aggressiveness to the red squirrel, and believed they carry disease to them too. The competition over food is serious, in particular, they ruin the hazel nut crop long before there is a viable nut in the shell, which I am sure is also contributing to the decline of Dormice. The amount of damage they do by stripping bark off young trees is enormous – it can also be quite dangerous for people walking under trees in windy conditions, when the branches they have damaged, shale down – unless foresters make a concerted effort to keep grey squirrels numbers low, there will be no forest sized beech – and many other species – over much of Britain in the future...