SHILLING TAILS
Three-quarters of a million squirrels were destroyed in the first two years of the Forestry Commission's 'shilling a tail' campaign, I noted the other day. A total of £29,533 was paid out for tails, representing some 590,660 shilling bounties. The remainder was presumably balanced out in the issue of cartridges to clubs. The grey squirrel was first introduced to Eng- land, and spread to Scotland and Wales with- out encouragement. The figures of bags in the three countries may be some indication of the grey squirrel's distribution if the enthusiasm for getting rid of them is equal throughout Britain. 725,072 of the three-quarters of a mil- lion were killed in England, 22,167 in Wales and only 6,288 in Scotland. The grey squirrel was unknown in this part of Wales when I first came to it, but now we have at least one squirrel club in the county and there may be several I have not heard about. I imagine that the local club was responsible for some of the 22,000 killed in Wales. I hope so. The grey squirrel has nothing to recommend it in my eyes. In addition to destroying trees, it murders nestlings as ruthlessly as any magpie or jay.
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