Monthly Archives: March 2014

Dragons Den – 17th February 2014

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This Dragon’s Den workshop, that went through each step of the process for making your own business. After, the group was given examples of either turning something for example the Brambell museum into a business or expanding Treborth Gardens to attract the attention of the public.

The group that I was in choose to do the expansion of Treborth Gardens. The group suggested that there should be a honey farm within the gardens and sell the honey within a gift shop and café. Welsh produced honey! As a group, we worked out how much each bee hive costs and worked out the amount of hives that Treborth Gardens could hold.

I feel that it was a worthwhile workshop, I now have a better understanding of what is required for a business and I feel that I can use this knowledge to help write the business plan assessment. However,  I felt that there could have been more breaks.

Landscape scale grey squirrel control – Are they lessons for the UK?

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Craig Shuttlewood started at the Red Squirrel Trust (http://rsst.org.uk/ ) in 2008, researching in the protection and to increase the numbers of the red squirrels.

Everyone knows that the grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is a pest at the best of times but now there is action being taken against them. The grey squirrel has a huge impact to the environment such as stripping bark from trees, nest predation, damaging properties  by eating the way into roofs and loafs and chewing on the beams and wiring causing fires. The grey squirrel are affecting the juvenile red squirrels more as they are eating the same food and living in the same habitats. However, the main reason is that the grey squirrels are affecting the lives of the red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) via the squirrel poxes virus.

“69% of survey says YES to the management of the Grey squirrel”

Squirrel poxes virus is carried by the grey squirrels to the red squirrels; however it ONLY affects the red squirrels. Once a squirrel has caught the infection then it will take a maximum of 3 weeks before the squirrel dies. It is 15 times more rapid if a population of red squirrels are exposed to the virus.

For more information on the Squirrel poxes virus;

The grey squirrel is under Section 9 – which status that the grey squirrel is a pest and can be kill at any time of the year.  There was a project to eradicate the grey squirrel. When this project started, they found out that there were people who owned private land were already killing the grey squirrel as a pest control.

It was noted that as numbers of grey declined, then so did the number off outbreak of the Squirrel poxes virus in the red squirrels.

There is NOTHING that has been published before saying that by killing the grey squirrels that the red squirrels will come back!

However, there has been a reintroduction in Newborough Forest (see image), as there is only a certain particular tree that the red squirrels love!

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/recreation.nsf/LUWebDocsByKey/WalesIsleofAngleseyNoForestNewborough

http://www.savenewboroughforest.org.uk/

The red squirrels are on the road to recovery, for more information;

http://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/how-you-can-help/appeals-and-campaigns/red-squirrels-the-road-to-recovery/