JAMES Loch could not be more wrong about the risk grey squirrels pose to reds (Letters, December 7)).

First, as Bill Oddie, Tony Salisbury and every other wildlife expert has stated time and again, the biggest cause of red decline has been mankind, particularly from building roads through their woodlands and five centuries of persecution verging on the near extinction.

The gregarious greys thrive when all other creatures (especially man) are around (where a warning call from one about predators is a call to all).

However, the hermit red is intolerant of another outside the mating season and pays nature’s price.

Ironically, in conifer areas where pine martins were reintroduced (which like mink kill for “sport”), it has only been the presence of greys – preferring lower branches to the tree-topping reds and quicker recovering from predation or epidemics – that has stopped the reds from being wiped out.

As for grey squirrels and Lyme Disease, if anyone is going to play that risk-to-mankind card, reds, unlike greys, have carried two strains of the leprosy virus for centuries.

This has become a non-issue thanks to antibiotics, before anyone panics.

All wild creatures are vectors of diseased ticks (especially game birds), and the reds’ stronghold of the Scottish Highlands is the highest risk area for Lyme Disease in the UK.

In order to put matters into a proper perspective, thousands have fed greys in Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens and Knightswood Parks (where they are so tame they readily clamber over visitors) for more than a century without a single Lyme Disease case resulting.

Finally, some Cumbrian reds have shown resistance to the squirrel parapox.

But there needs to be the governmental will to eradicate the disease within both red and grey squirrel populations (again contrary to the myth greys aren’t immune from it).

A century ago, “experts” scoffed at plans to wipe rabies out of the UK – in a less sophisticated age it took only 10 years.

Mark Boyle,

15 Linn Park Gardens,

Johnstone.

IN his letter concerning grey squirrels, James Loch appears to condone the culling of this species for two specific reasons.

First, he condemns them for being carriers of squirrel pox, which is lethal to red squirrels, which they inadvertently infect.

Secondly, he condemns them as tick hosts and therefore spreaders of the admittedly horrible Lyme disease.

He also offers as a way of justifying a cull the fact that they are not an indigenous species.

All of these arguments are true. However, if we take each point in turn we can see that these unfortunate outcomes are all unintentional on the part of the grey squirrel.

It did not deliberately infect itself with pox and has not intentionally harmed its red cousin. Neither did it seek to be a host to the tick parasite.

This is a situation it shares with virtually every other wild and domestic animal.

Neither is it some form of mammalian illegal immigrant – it was introduced into this country deliberately by a human being.

However, what really disturbs me is the distasteful epithet “tree rats”.

I assume that this is intentionally pejorative and applies only to the foreign species and not the native red.

I may be wrong but it suggests a level of dislike bordering on hatred directed at what is simply another innocent animal making its way in this difficult world.

Jim Meikle,

41 Lampson Road,

Killearn.