| WildLives Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre |
| The Origin of the Mersea Island Red Squirrels |
| Approximately 15 years ago Wildlives was approached by Lady Sylvia Morrow, who had been keeping two pet female red squirrels. She wanted them to go to a good home, so offered them to Wildlives. As Wildlives is a rescue centre with the aim of releasing animals back into the wild, rather than a captive sanctuary, Rosie came up with the idea of starting a breeding program with the two females. The long term aim would be to release red squirrels back into the wild. Rosie contacted David Stapleford, of the Red Squirrel Conservation Trust and the National Red Squirrel Captive Breeding Program at Pensthorpe in Fakenham (East Anglia branch). There were long discussions to make the plan a reality, and an extremely large and expensive purpose-built enclosure was constructed, with ample room for exercise and natural behaviour, located in a very quiet and isolated part of the centre to minimise disturbance and human contact. Finally when all was ready, Lady Morrow’s two females arrived, and, once they had settled in, a male was carefully introduced from Pensthorpe in Fakenham. The male immediately mated with both females, to David’s amazement and joy – in 40 years of being a red squirrel champion he had never before seen them mating. Once the breeding program began to show success, Rosie became concerned about the planned release of the offspring; the favoured release site was Anglesey island, which has a thriving population of grey squirrels (which were being culled), and the survival rates of red squirrel there was not as high as had been hoped. Rosie then thought of Mersea Island, with its lack of a resident grey squirrel population, and thought it would be an ideal place to start a new red squirrel colony. After a couple of years of multiple phone calls and discussions involving David Stapleford, the head of the Red Squirrel Breeding Program at Pensthorpe, and Dougal Urquhart, the ranger at Cudmore Grove Country Park in East Mersea, all were agreed that Mersea island would be, as Rosie had thought, ideal for the new colony. Red squirrel boxes were set up in East Mersea and Rosie’s red squirrels were released there where they would be monitored under the auspices of David Stapleford. Since that time the red squirrels have flourished and thrived, and become an integral part of the island wildlife and culture. |