THE LAST CORNISH RED SQUIRREL

This is another specimen from Truro Museum, and is the only bona fide Cornish specimen of the red squirrel that I have been able to find. In 1966, S.C. Madge wrote that the species was almost extinct in South-eastern Cornwall, although ‘there still might have been a few at Mount Edgecombe’.

Two years later, Dr. D.W. Turk wrote that:

“Although local the species is still widespread in the county and may indeed be spreading into new areas”.

In 1979, Manning noted that:

“It seems likely that the Red Squirrel has vanished from this part of England”.

although he expressed a faint hope that some might still survive in the far western tip of Cornwall. There are a few other Cornish records in the archives of the Institute for Cornish Studies, but after the mid-1970s even these peter out.

Officially, the status of the species is even less certain. Harry Pepper from the Forestry Commission Research Centre, says that the most recent Westcountry sightings that he is prepared to substantiate are from the edges of Bodmin Moor in 1965. (We believe that this roadkilled specimen was that animal). His most recent records from Devonshire are a decade earlier than that!