The Wildlife Trust of South and West
Wales needs to act now to save our red squirrels in mid Wales. Our
native mid Wales red squirrels could be gone within your lifetime -
they need your help today.

Our aim is to protect and expand the
unique population of red squirrels in the Tywi Forest, one of only
three key populations left in Wales, and the only one remaining in
the south of the country.

Once common throughout the UK, red
squirrels have disappeared from many areas of England and Wales and
are threatened in Scotland and Northern Ireland. They are now largely
confined to Scotland, areas of North and Mid Wales, Northern Ireland
and parts of Northern England.

Unfortunately, red and grey squirrels
cannot live side by side; when grey squirrels arrive in a red
squirrel area, the red squirrels will die out if there is no
intervention. A native of North America, the grey squirrel first
arrived in Mid Wales in the 1950s, and has spread at an alarming
rate, colonising Wales so effectively, that they now are the dominant
squirrel species. As well as competing for food and habitat, the
grey squirrel carries the Squirrel Pox virus, which has little effect
on the grey but is fatal when passed to the red. Action on-the-ground
to control the numbers of invasive grey squirrels has worked to bring
back the red squirrel from the verge of extinction in south Cumbria,
where the ‘experts’ had written off this native mammal as
unviable, faced with competition for resources and disease from the
vast numbers of grey squirrels.

The five year Mid Wales Red Squirrel
Project built a solid volunteer base and raised the profile of the
red squirrel in mid Wales; volunteers donated over 10,000 hours of
their time to the project. Volunteer surveys have helped to build a
more complete picture of where red squirrels are thriving and where
they are not. Since 2014, reports of red squirrel sightings in mid
Wales have risen by over 100% compared to the previous five years,
suggesting that the red squirrel population in mid Wales is beginning
to make a recovery. This is a crucial time to build on the good work
already achieved by the project, but funding is coming to an end. We
need your support to recruit and train volunteers and to work with
forest managers to improve conditions and help save the red squirrel
in mid Wales.

We currently have very little
information about how red squirrels survive in the forests of mid
Wales. The more we can find out about how red squirrels use the
forest habitat, the better we can inform habitat improvements and
hopefully increase the red squirrel population. Our target of £5,000
will fund the purchase of vital survey equipment such as trail
cameras for red squirrel detection and pit-tags to enable the project
team to identify individual squirrels.

Please donate if you can.

For further details please see:

https://midwalesredsquirrels.org/

https://www.welshwildlife.org/

Thanks for taking the time to visit my
JustGiving page. Please share to all your nutty friends!

Donating through JustGiving is simple,
fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving -
they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate,
they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most
efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the
charity.

Photo WTSWW Paul Harry - Red on a
feeder

Iolo Williams on the Red Squirrel;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00mb583

For further details please see;

https://midwalesredsquirrels.org/ 

https://www.welshwildlife.org/

Can you do something for 30 Days Wild campaign? throughout JUNE we want you the be WILD!