Come On You Reds!

 Fighting nature is hard. Yet, one thing gives me hope: working with it. Once-insuperable diseases are controlled, with apparently little effort. Black Death still exists. So do leprosy and cholera. In the UK? Not the priority they used to be. The ecology changed, not least through plumbing, and so organisms changed their dynamics.

That’s why what is going on in Ireland’s ecology, with another small reddish creature, is exciting. Here the native pine marten, long persecuted, has started to return. The pine marten is like a toothy malevolent stoat that hunts squirrels. It is, on the face of it, bad squirrel news.

But as it returned, something odd happened. So too did the beleaguered reds. A predator of the reds helped the reds. Why? Because they are wise to it. Reds and pine martens co-evolved. Greys didn’t. So, naive to this hell-weasel, greys get eaten. Then pine marten-savvy reds scamper, warily, into the gap.

In England, too, pine martens are regaining old haunts. Will reds follow? In a delicate ecological balance, small ecological differences matter. In Ireland greys, particularly in urban areas, will always persist. But for reds the pine marten may offer a way it can persist, too. And, if we ever pursue proper eradication, it’ll mean fewer hammers. Times.

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