Highland Red Squirrel Project

This is a restricted project and is not publicly available for Trapping and Spotting. But if you would like to join the project, please contact us at info@mammalweb.org.

This project, focused on understanding the impact of, and potential mitigation for, forest operations on red squirrels, is being run by a team based at the University of the Highlands and Islands in collaboration with Forest Enterprise Scotland.  

Red squirrels are charismatic members of the UK’s native fauna but have been highlighted as one of our more threatened native mammals.  Although they occur in various parts of the UK, the majority of red squirrels (c. 75% of the UK population) are found in Scotland.  Red squirrels and their dreys are protected under UK and Scottish legislation, and there is a requirement to mitigate for any forest operations that could disturb the squirrels or damage their dreys.  Forest Enterprise Scotland manages over 400,000 ha of Scotland’s multi-functional forests and need to plan mitigation for their forest operations.  There is, however, very limited information about the impact of disturbance caused by forest operations on red squirrels.  Without knowing the impacts of those operations, if any, it’s difficult to know what mitigation, if any, is needed.  The team aims to determine the impact on red squirrel breeding success, ranging behaviour and drey usage of habitat fragmentation and habitat loss caused by forest operations.  They are also looking into the use of nest boxes as a potential mitigation measure for forest operations taking place during the breeding season.  This latter aspect of the project is being assessed, in part, by determining the use of nest boxes at different heights and in different tree types.  The team set up their monitoring so that camera traps capture animals investigating or going into and out of the nest boxes.  Spotters can help the team to classify what (if anything) is using the nest boxes.

With your help, the current images have now been fully classified.  Read about the project's findings here.