UK wildlife under threat — and the Red Squirrel

🌿 Written by a qualified animal-care practitioner · Reviewed for accuracy · 7 min read

The biggest threat to wildlife in the UK is human activity. As people hunt, build, farm, travel and pollute, they reduce the numbers of many wild species and disturb the delicate balance between them. When one animal's population falls, the effects ripple outward: predators lose prey, prey lose the plants they depend on, and whole food chains can be disrupted. In this lesson we look at the main threats facing UK wildlife, and then focus on one species that shows the problem clearly — the native red squirrel.

Main threats to UK wildlife

Most threats to British wildlife can be traced back, directly or indirectly, to what humans do. Here are the main ones:

• Hunting — following, capturing or killing wild animals for food, sport or trade.
• Badger baiting — illegally provoking a badger to fight dogs. It is both cruel and against the law.
• Pollution — contaminating habitats such as rivers, lakes and soil, which harms the health of the wildlife that lives there.
• Disease — infectious illness spreading through wild populations as pathogens pass from animal to animal.
• Habitat encroachment — humans disturbing habitats through urbanisation and agriculture, shrinking the space and resources available so populations fall.
• Invasive species — non-native animals or plants taking over the habitats and food of native species, causing native populations to decline.
• Road traffic accidents — wildlife killed or injured by vehicles on roads that cut through their habitats.

Case study: the Red Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris)

The red squirrel is a small squirrel native to Europe and northern Asia. You can recognise it by its reddish-brown fur, its tufted ears and its long, bushy tail. It was once a common sight in woodlands across the UK, but its numbers have fallen sharply.

The main cause of this decline is an invasive species: the larger North American grey squirrel. Greys outcompete reds for both habitat and food, so where greys move in, reds struggle to survive. Worse still, grey squirrels carry the squirrelpox virus. The virus is harmless to greys but usually fatal to reds, so it spreads through red populations with devastating effect. Together, competition and disease have pushed the red squirrel out of much of the country.

How are red squirrels protected?

Conservationists use several approaches at once to give red squirrels the best chance:

• Habitat conservation — protecting and managing woodland where reds can live safely.
• Grey-squirrel control — reducing grey numbers in and around red squirrel strongholds.
• Predator management — managing pressures on red populations so they can recover.
• Public education and awareness — helping people understand the threats and how they can help.
• Squirrelpox monitoring and biosecurity — watching for the virus and keeping red squirrel habitats clean to slow its spread.

A number of UK organisations and conservation sites work to save the red squirrel, including the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, the British Wildlife Centre in Lingfield, the Snaizeholme Red Squirrel Sanctuary near Hawes, Saving Scotland's Red Squirrels based in Edinburgh, and the Wildwood Trust in Herne Bay.

The law that protects them

Red squirrels are protected by several important pieces of legislation:

• Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 — provides legal protection for wildlife and the wider countryside.
• Section 41 species of principal importance under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities (NERC) Act 2006 — identifies key species for biodiversity. It is an offence to intentionally harm or disturb them without a licence.
• Environment Act 2021 — sets legally binding targets for air and water quality, biodiversity, waste reduction and tackling climate change.

How well is it working?

The picture is mixed. In some places conservation has been a real success: the Isle of Wight, for example, now has a strong and healthy red squirrel population, helped by the fact that grey squirrels have not become established there. In other places — especially urban areas where greys dominate — protecting reds remains a serious challenge. What is clear is that continued progress is crucial if we are to keep the red squirrel from disappearing from the UK altogether.

Educational content for UK schools. Sources should always be checked against current guidance (e.g. The Wildlife Trusts, Natural England).

← Back to all articles