Re: introduced wildlife
Isabel Tipton wrote:
>
> Here on Vancouver Isalnd, Canada, we have grey squirrels which are
> becoming a real meance. They not only take all nuts, but seem to run
> off with plums, and in some gardens have taken up digging bulbs. Feral
> cats are everywhere, and are making serious inroads on the songbird
> population.The main nuisances ,however, are plants- Scotch Broom and
> Himalayan blackberry will choke out all native vegetation if given the
> chance, and keeping them under control is always on the mind of the
> country gardener.
Isabel
I remember grey squirrels as bring an introduced animal in Britain
(where DO they come from in the first place?). The main objection at the
time (I am talking of 50 years ago) was that they were attacking and
displacing the native red squirrel, though I have later read their food
preferences are quite different, so I am not sure of this. I remember we
saw them mostly in parks running over the trunks of trees and never
heard of them being a pest in gardens. Pehaps your problem with them is
caused by ever-diminishing supplies of wild food driving them to raid
your gardens..
We also have troubles with plants as well as possums. Broom and European
Blackberries would be high on our list, but way short of gorse (brought
in for hedging), which has occupied vast tracks of hillside, where early
settlers unwisely took off the forest cover, and spreads down into the
valley pastures where these are not well maintained. Its redeeming
feature is the sheet of golden flowers almost all year round. The only
other good thing about the gorse is that, if not allowed to burn, it
forms a very good nurse crop for regenerating forest, which eventually
overtops it and kills it by starving it of sunlight. Burning can be a
problem, though in dry summers as it tends to go up like a torch, while
true native growth is markedly fireproof.
moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata,
New Zealand (astride the "Ring of Fire" in the SW Pacific).
