They are one of Scotland’s best-loved and most endangered species, but now a gang of red squirrels in Aberdeenshire have landed one of their most fervent admirers in hot water.
John Cook has been told by experts to cut down on feeding the creatures in Carnie Woods, near Westhill, to prevent the population growing too large.
The advice from the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels (SSRS) project has left the north-east businessman confused and angry.
Mr Cook, owner of Hollywood Cars in Westhill, said: “Three times I day, unless I’m on holiday, I feed the squirrels a mixture of chopped up peanuts and seeds to supplement their feed and keep them going.
“But I’m worried about an overpopulation of them in Carnie Woods, and all I’ve been told to do is to stop feeding them as much.
“It appears logical to me that if you’re trying to promote the survival of a species, you need to feed them and nurture them.
“If it were up to me I would trap them and relocate them to a place that was more suitable, there are places across Scotland crying out for red squirrels, but unfortunately everything is so tied up in red tape.”
The SSRS project is a partnership between five different charity, government and land owning groups which are seeking to preserve the fortunes of the red squirrel north of the border.
The animals have been driven out of much of the rest of the UK due to a range of reasons, including loss of habitat and rivalry with their non-native grey cousins, and 75% of the population is now confined to Scotland.
Stephen Willis, the SSRS’s project manager for the north-east, insisted that if the food supply to the Carnie Woods squirrels was cut off it was likely to encourage them to spread out and that this would be better for the species in the long-run.
He said: “It is a very dense population of squirrels in a very small area of habitat, which can lead to competition for resources.
“I had a very long conversation with Mr Cook about this, we discussed the issues of translocation, but my only possible suggestion for this situation was that if the supplementary feeding was reduced, the animals would naturally disperse.
“It’s good that local people responsibly feed the squirrel population, but I do have a feeling that the supplementary feeding is what is keeping the population artificially high in the woodland.”