Posted By Phil Workman
Here’s a good one. We have been tasked with carrying out a grey squirrel cull at one of our (MoD) sites. We've been setting traps, catching the little blighters and then despatching them. We've been doing this since the start of the New Year. To date we have caught about 10. This work is carried out by a professional. As the work is labour intensive and the traps have to be checked daily it will cost a fortune. We also appear to be meeting with some sort of activist activity as the traps are being tampered with.

The 'expert' has made a suggestion that we carry out an exercise of shooting them with an air rifle. He says a dawn shoot would get rid of them quicker.

It sounds good in principle, but when you stop and think about the health and safety implications of having a man running round with a rifle at 07:00 on an occupied site with close neighbours it looks more a case of a high risk exercise.

I favour the more humane method of shooting. Provided we inform people on site of the activity, use a professional contractor who provides safety documentation, which we then review to formulate our own risk assessments etc, is this the way forward?

What do memebers think?

Posted By Peter Longworth
Kill them all. Death to the grey squirrel I say. A more insidious invasion than John Carpenter's "The Thing". Along with mink, coypu, crayfish and Japanese Hogweed

Posted By Taff
Is the shooting to be done with a high powered air rifle or .22 ballistic rifle?

You also need to identify the area of fall of shot as most of the shots taken will be from below (I assume). Access to this area would need to be restricted during the operation.

Also consider the storage of ammunition (bullets), Noise nuisance and surrounding properties and footpaths.

IMO an air rifle would be the way to go.

Posted By philly boy
have you thought of using a falconer? i know you can use them to eradicate pigeons, I'm not sure about basil brush though (i know he's red and not grey)

Posted By holyterror72
Basil Brush is a fox.

Posted By jackw.
Hi, I had some problems at my house a few years back with grey squirells and got environmental services involved they told me they/I couldn't kill them. apparently because of the demise of the red squirrel there was a protection order that did not differentiate between the grey and red..might be worth checking..i agree they are little buggers.

Cheers

Posted By Bill Elliott
Like 'em or not - they need to be controlled in certain situations and you should do this humanely if culling is appropriate. See www.defra.gov.uk/rds/pub...ons/technical/TAN_09.pdf

Posted By Mark Eastbourne
I owuld not worry about the noise as a .22 with an effective silencer is whisper quiet.

Posted By Ken Taylor
They are too fast for cats to catch. I don't understand the problem about using guns on an MoD site. It would also be interesting to hear why you need to cull them.

We don't allow grey squirrels here on the Isle of Wight. All ours are red. When a suspect grey is sited, the authorities use 'grey size' traps but I'm not aware of whether they find any or, if so, what they do with them. There is a record of one of the ferries from the mainland having to turn back to port when a grey was found on board. Water is clearly something of a deterrent - although they can swim. Perhaps you could install a moat around your sensitive site - but from our experience it may need to be rather wide!

Posted By DavidW
Mark

I think when Phil said "despatch them" I don't think he meant release them somewhere else. Although I guess it is a kind of "release" from this earthly domain!

Posted By John Murgatroyd
If you intend to use traps, poison or shooters then you had better make sure there are no red squirrels in that area. It is an offence to trap ,poison or kill any red squirrels.