Restaurants are urged to serve ‘nutritious’ grey squirrel meat

Gray squirrels should be served in restaurants, according to a wildlife campaign group.

Exmoor Squirrel Project, which is trying to eradicate gray squirrels on Exmoor so they can be replaced by native red squirrels, says the non-native creatures can be served in stews, pies and kebabs.

The organizers are also in talks with two restaurants about serving gray squirrel dishes.

The project encourages local homeowners and landowners to stop feeding gray squirrels, volunteer to guard forests for them, and in some cases, with proper training from the project, set traps in gardens or fields to catch the squirrels.

Conservationists say red squirrels, which have lived in the UK for some 10,000 years, could become extinct here in a decade because of the invasive gray squirrel.

It’s not the first time squirrel eating has been in the news.

In 2009, Walkers announced that it would start selling ‘Cajun Squirrel’ flavored potato chips after a competition for the public to suggest new flavors.

The following year, the Daily Mail revealed how a branch of the Budgens supermarket chain in north London’s fashionable Crouch End had begun selling squirrels.

Squirrel pie, meanwhile, was a popular delicacy served until the last century when it disappeared from the British menu, but it has had a revival since the turn of the century thanks to tries to save its less aggressive red cousins ​​from extinction.

Thousands of gray squirrels were sold to restaurants, butchers and were sold at farmers’ markets after being legally captured and shot in forests and rural areas.

Ten years later, an anti-vegan protester was filmed eating a dead squirrel in front of shocked onlookers at a vegan market.

Gray squirrels carry the squirrel pox virus, which does no harm to them but is deadly to red squirrels.

While some environmentalists just want to tell the two sets of squirrels apart, the Exmoor Squirrel Project wants to get rid of grays and reintroduce red squirrels.

Kerrie Hosegood, acting manager of Exmoor Squirrel Project, which owns a forestry company called Three Atop Woodland Services, says gray squirrels have caused an estimated £40 million worth of damage to UK trees.

She said, ‘I’ve eaten gray squirrel before, having skinned and boned one, and it tastes very good – gamey, like rabbit.

“It’s perfect to leave in the slow cooker and eat in a stew.”

“We want people to help control the gray squirrel, so we offer training.

“Landowners and homeowners can help address the problem of gray squirrels destroying trees.”

The gray squirrel is the main reason for the decline of the red squirrel, which has replaced the native squirrels in almost all of England and Wales.

Wildlife groups closely monitor squirrel populations and conduct targeted monitoring of gray squirrels in areas where red squirrels are threatened with extinction.

However, the Exmoor Squirrel Project aims to reintroduce red squirrels by banishing gray squirrels, and is already engaged in capturing and shooting gray squirrels.

Mrs Hosegood said: ‘A gray squirrel will strip the bark to get to the sap underneath, and we need to protect our forest and native trees.

‘However, I don’t think an animal should die in vain, so it makes sense that we eat these squirrels.

“It would also be great to donate gray squirrels to animal shelters and zoos, which may be struggling with the cost of living crisis, to be used as food for their carnivores.”