Red-dy for their “Autumnwatch” close-up

Henllys, the Holiday Property Bond’s Anglesey home, has always been a crowd-puller – but it wasn’t just HPB that decided to make a home there.

Twenty years ago the UK’s red squirrel population was under serious threat – and Anglesey was by no means immune. Now, however, the numbers stand at a healthy 500, and rising. And 150 or so have decided to remain close to the HPB site – to the delight of Bondholders and the BBC’s "Autumnwatch" TV programme, who came to film the “Henllys Reds” a few weeks ago (the programme will be broadcast in due course).

But how did Henllys, and Anglesey, turn the reintroduction programme into such a success? Step forward Dr Craig Shuttleworth…

Though it continues to thrive across Europe and into Asia, the near demise of the red squirrel in Britain and Ireland has been well documented. The larger eastern grey squirrel, a North American import, carries the squirrel pox virus – harmless to itself, but lethal to reds. The eastern grey’s proliferation has thus been accompanied by a steep decline in the number of red squirrels. Fewer than 140,000 are thought to be left in the British Isles, of which about 85% are in Scotland.

500, however – a conservative estimate, and rising fast – have made their home in Anglesey, North Wales, thanks to a reintroduction programme carried out by Red Squirrels Trust Wales and Henllys, the Holiday Property Bond’s home on the island.

Dr Shuttleworth, a Scot by birth, lives in Anglesey – and happens to be a leading authority on red squirrels. As such he was the natural choice to manage the project, first conceived towards the end of the 1990s.

“It was a very exciting time,” Craig recalls. “We were very much making it up as we went along. It was very important to capture the public’s imagination from the start, which we did by setting up the Friends of the Anglesey Red Squirrels which aimed to be an interface between the project and local people, facilitating volunteering and involvement on Anglesey. Membership steadily grew to over 300 with a modest annual subscription funding the production of education material and the red squirrel webcam [one of the most popular features at Henllys].

“Stage one involved eradicating the grey squirrel population – neither an easy task nor a pleasant one; after all it’s hardly the greys’ fault they turned up here in the first place. But our project would have stood no chance without the removal of the ‘grey threat’.”

The Trust then released six red squirrels, in two small enclosures. Craig, however, is keen to stress that the project’s focus has always been about introducing, establishing and maintaining a viable red squirrel population, rather than just letting loose a few cute fluffy animals. “The aim was always to restore, not to showcase – this isn’t a wildlife park,” he avers.

The Anglesey project was a first in another way, too. The island’s trees are predominantly broadleaf, favoured by grey squirrels over conifers (this is the reason the reds, which have no preference, have made a comparative success of surviving in Scotland’s predominantly pine forests). To successfully reintroduce red squirrels in an environment where ‘the grey holds sway’ counts as a significant achievement.

“The lessons learned from Anglesey are valuable to science throughout the UK and Europe,” Craig says.

With the project successfully started, it would be wrong to say that Craig, or the Trust, took a back seat; he is, however, quick to credit Henllys’s woodsman David Morrison for continuing to manage the programme on a day-to-day level. “Gratifyingly, 150 or so of our Anglesey reds have decided to stick around the HPB site, which must be testament to David’s excellent husbandry. These are wild animals, true enough; but they are undeniably lovely to look at – and we’ve steadily made that easier by moving feeding boxes closer to where people are. I know for a fact that HPB’s Bondholders love to see them, to watch them on the bird tables…

“And, given how much help Henllys and HPB have been to us, it seems like the least we could do!” he adds.