Look at her.
This is squirrelpox: a disease carried harmlessly by many grey squirrels, but devastating to our native reds.
For red squirrels, squirrelpox is usually fatal. The swelling, lesions and suffering can progress rapidly, leaving animals weak, distressed, unable to feed properly, and often dying within days.
And yet somehow, even now, there are still people insisting grey squirrels are simply “misunderstood natives” and that concerns about red squirrel decline are exaggerated.
This is not about blame or hatred. Grey squirrels did not choose to be brought here by humans from North America in the 1800s.
But ecological reality still matters.
Red squirrels evolved alongside Britain’s woodlands over thousands of years. They are part of a delicate native ecosystem. They help disperse seeds and fungi, support woodland regeneration, and are woven into our cultural and natural identity.
Grey squirrels, by contrast, place enormous pressure on those same ecosystems. They outcompete reds for food and habitat, strip bark from broadleaf trees, damage young woodland, raid nests, and carry squirrelpox without suffering its effects themselves.
That does not make greys “evil.” It makes them an invasive non-native species with serious ecological consequences.
Pretending otherwise helps nobody. Not the reds. Not the woods. Not biodiversity.
Real conservation is rarely neat or emotionally comfortable. It means protecting habitat, funding vaccine research, enforcing wildlife laws, restoring resilient woodland, and supporting humane long-term grey squirrel management.
Because behind every statistic is an animal like this.
And if we continue to look away, England may lose its red squirrels altogether.
Save Our Reds has now grown far beyond a petition. It has become a national grassroots campaign involving volunteers, conservationists, filmmakers, woodland groups, photographers, scientists, landowners and ordinary people who simply refuse to let this species disappear quietly.
But the petition still matters. Visibility matters. Pressure matters.
Let’s push past 80,000 signatures and beyond ahead of Save Our Reds Day this Friday.
Please share. Please keep talking about this. And please don’t let people reduce it to “reds versus greys.”
This is about the future of our native woodlands themselves.
#SaveOurReds #RedSquirrels #Conservation #BritishWildlife