Fourteen members and volunteers of the Mid Wales Red Squirrel Project helped out for a day to find out more about the habitat that red squirrels use within the forest. Reds are now restricted to coniferous forests in mid Wales – grey squirrels dominate the large-seeded broadleaved woodlands so reds have retreated into the conifer forests where they can survive on the smaller seeds of the conifer trees. However even though there are many thousands of acres of conifer trees, most of these are Sitka spruce, which the squirrels do not favour. Fortunately throughout the forest there are small areas planted with species that the squirrels prefer, e.g. lodgepole pine, Norway spruce and Japanese larch, which have larger seeds that the reds can eat. The Project has been fortunate to receive funding from CCW, which has enabled a number of short surveys of the forest, with mixed success. What was needed was a more systematic survey of the reds’ preferred tree species. By looking for squirrel feeding signs, this would give us a better idea of where to survey in the future and allow an assessment of the health of the trees and whether they were coning or not. Further funding from the BBC has allowed the group to organise such a survey along with the production of a leaflet on red squirrels in mid Wales encouraging the sending in of records to the Project. There have been a number of records in areas in recent months from areas where no reds have been recorded for a number of years.

The group were provided with maps by the Forestry Commission and divided up into pairs to travel into the forest to find the larch and lodgepole pine stands. Because of the good turnout, areas of the forest were assessed from Strata Florida right down to Llyn Brianne reservoir.

The good news was that fresh squirrel feeding signs were found in almost every stand of suitable species surveyed. Eaten cones were found on the forest floor and dreys seen in the trees. What could not be established was whether these were feeding signs from red or grey squirrels, but the group is optimistic that these may well be reds. Further survey this winter will help establish this. Unfortunately greys have been trapped in the forest and this could have a detrimental effect on the reds, as in other areas reds have vanished within a number of years of the greys arrival.