North East Volunteer Spotlight: Celebrating our volunteer Janice Drew as she moves on to pastures new!

…team need to be “everywhere at once”! In order to achieve this, over the last two and a half years we have recruited around 60 volunteers, who take part in our “Rapid Response Monitoring”, which are fortnightly feeder surveys all over Aberdeen city, and in the south of the region (to prevent immigration from Angus). This amounts to roughly 27… […]

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News: Over £1M in new funding awarded to aid red squirrel recovery in Scotland

…more than ever, we need nature-based solutions to the climate-nature crises. It’s projects like this that can really help to stop biodiversity loss and enable us to move towards a nature-rich, net-zero future for everyone in Scotland.” Additionally, separate limited funding from SSRS partners NatureScot and Forestry and Land Scotland has been secured to continue professional grey squirrel control in… […]

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News: Get squirrel spotting during the Great Scottish Squirrel Survey next week!

…out-compete reds for food and living space and can also carry squirrelpox, a virus that doesn’t harm them but is fatal to reds. Squirrel sightings, which are collected year-round, help the National Lottery-funded SSRS project to understand how the distribution of each species is changing over time, and can also alert staff to situations where grey squirrels are posing an… […]

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Great Scottish Squirrel Survey

…the situation. What makes the Great Scottish Squirrel Survey so great is that anyone can take part from anywhere in Scotland. Areas of known squirrel territory are equally important as those where few squirrels have been seen before. You can view all our previous sightings records here. Last year over 650 people reported 790 squirrel sightings in just one week…. […]

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Building a Volunteer Network

…Coun cil (Common Good Fund).” Ongoing Support Approaching local businesses in your area is a great way to connect with the community and help raise funds from the public. “ I have been able to arrange continuing support in partnership with a local rural business (Cream o’Galloway , ice cream and cheese makers). They give away used ice cream containers… […]

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Community action in Galloway

…have a small army of over 50 local contacts on the lookout for both species, with more people asking to join in, and tourists doing their bit as well. When doing our hopper surveys in 2015, we were in a position to detect greys, but completely failed to do so. Even though there were sightings during our survey periods, no… […]

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Scotland’s Red Squirrels

…and living space, making it difficult for red squirrels to successfully breed and for their young to survive. When grey squirrels move into a new area, red squirrels can be completely replaced within 15 years. The grey squirrel is a North American species that was first introduced to Britain in Victorian times, to decorate the gardens of large stately homes…. […]

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Celebrating a red squirrel champion

…social media advocates, community fundraisers, recruiting sergeants, etc. I hope my award inspires others to reflect on their own skills and seek to apply them energetically to red squirrel conservation, or indeed any other activity that helps to save our planet.” As Community Engagement Officer for the South West, I’ve had the privilege of working closely with Peter over the… […]

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This Year's Sightings