Pine martens return to Dartmoor after 150-year absence

82 pointsposted a year ago
by zeristor
(theguardian.com)

33 Comments

cmsefton

a year ago

> Studies have also shown the pine martens are effective predators of grey squirrels, giving hope that they may provide a natural control for the introduced squirrel, which damages trees in commercial plantations and has virtually wiped out the red squirrel in England.

If, like me, you were wondering whether they also predate red squirrels, apparently pine martens hunt and eat grey squirrels far more, as they're able to easily raid grey squirrel nests. Red squirrels have evolved alongside pine martens and have better awareness to the threat they pose. This article was informative:

https://www.discoverwildlife.com/news/pine-martens-predate-o...

raesene9

a year ago

Anecdotally I can say that red squirrels and Pine Martens can co-exist quite happily, as I live in an area where we see both regularly and the presence of the Pine Martens doesn't seem to intimidate the squirrels or reduce their numbers significantly.

Also turns out that Pine Martens are quite fond of peanuts.

zeristor

a year ago

I believe red squirrels are lighter than pine martens, and so can go out further on branches, whereas grey squirrels can’t.

I’m guessing they’ll be able to reintroduce red squirrels in these areas in due course.

adrian_b

a year ago

Sometimes they might go further on suitable thin branches, but I doubt that this matters much. I have never heard of a case when a marten could not advance towards a squirrel due to fear of breaking the branch.

What red squirrels can do and martens cannot do, is to jump down from the tree from a relatively great height without injury, due to their low weight and fluffy hair and then climb into another tree, far from the marten.

It is likely that this behavior of some squirrels is what has lead to the evolution of the flying squirrels.

Tade0

a year ago

I guess the key indicator for the martens is that grey squirrels are simply a larger meal.

pfdietz

a year ago

I was a bit confused because there's a related species in North America, Martes americana, that is also sometimes called the pine marten (more properly, the American marten or American pine marten). The European species is Martes martes.

The American species clearly doesn't extirpate gray squirrels, but in North America red and gray squirrels do coexist. However, these red squirrels are also a different species, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, not the European species, Sciurus vulgaris. The American pine marten is a predator of the American red squirrel.

Squirrel taxonomy seems to be in a state of flux at present due to DNA information becoming available.

card_zero

a year ago

> However, these red squirrels are also a different species

Less tufty ears, more violent.

pfdietz

a year ago

No Beatrix Potter character for these psychos.

riedel

a year ago

Just quickly skimmed the article but does the article answer why they seem to be everywhere in Europe except for England ? [0]

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/European...

cmsefton

a year ago

> Pine martens were driven to extinction in England at the turn of the 20th century by the loss of forests and persecution, with gamekeepers in particular targeting the animals for preying upon pheasants and poultry.

arpinum

a year ago

[flagged]

thom

a year ago

There's obviously a very good argument in the UK that the planning system is broken, and a good chunk of the incoming government's manifesto was an acknowledgement of that. But perhaps we can agree that while in general we might not need to slowly and expensively ponder every woodland creature when trying to build infrastructure, it's not a bad thing to have some parts of Britain dedicated to rewilding. Besides, it's not infrastructure concerns fighting against that on Dartmoor, it's a complex mix of private landowners (the largest of which is the crown), farmers (many of which have livestock on common land), and ecological jewels like its temperate rainforests. In fact the Dartmoor line, which skirts the national park, reopened in 2021, took less than a year to finish, and came in £10m under budget. Who knew we could build things, eh?

dflock

a year ago

Good? Giving the tiniest little shit about nature and not wiping out the entire biosphere to build super low density housing over everything is the least we can do.

arpinum

a year ago

Not good. There is a spectrum of choices between not having enough reservoirs and power generation on one end and paving over the entire country on the other. I would trade having bats confused at night in order to have more housing within 2 miles of a major city.

ninalanyon

a year ago

Why not have more housing in the city? There's lots of space in the UK town I come from that is very poorly utilized. As for power generation, solar panels can coexist with quite a lot of wildlife.

user

a year ago

[deleted]

phatfish

a year ago

I might agree, if high-density housing in England wasn't coupled with laughable rights for the owners of flats/apartments. The current leasehold system needs to be replaced, but I doubt anything will change even with the new government.

frereubu

a year ago

The way you've phrased this comes across as a counterpoint, but both of these things can be true and need fixing. It doesn't have to be either / or.

ndsipa_pomu

a year ago

If we can't manage to build infrastructure problems without destroying habitats, then we need to do much better. Maybe 20mph speed limits are what's required if motorists are going to be destroying wildlife - certainly the ponies will be more likely to survive if drivers reduce their speed a bit.

frereubu

a year ago

There are plenty of brown-field sites where NIMBYs have managed to block housing, including places like old gas works, which thankfully seems to be changing under the new government. We don't need to build or have high speed limits on Dartmoor, which is what we're talking about here.

arpinum

a year ago

We do need to build and maintain the existing reservoirs that provide water for much of Devon, otherwise we will be shipping it in from Norway. Communities that live in Dartmoor may want to upgrade to more comfortable houses and experience less poverty. A community like Postbridge or Princetown would be severely isolated by 20mph speed limits.

frereubu

a year ago

Princetown to the city centre of Plymouth is 15 miles. If the entire way was 20mph then it would be 45 minutes rather than the 30 minutes if it was 30mph. But that's under ideal conditions where you're driving at a constant speed from point to point. In the real world I bet much of that difference would be eaten away by junctions and other traffic etc. as you hit the outskirts of Plymouth. The hyperbole of "severely isolated" really does your argument no favours.

tristramb

a year ago

"severely isolated by 20mph speed limits"

Really?

thom

a year ago

If you work in Exeter you've probably already got an hour's commute each way. It's not unreasonable to consider making that two hours a hardship for many people, whether or not you consider that a worthwhile trade-off.

ndsipa_pomu

a year ago

Surely their hardship stems from their decision to live so far from where they work? I don't think we should hasten the extinction of species just to fit in with making someone's poor decision less onerous.

thom

a year ago

Sure, and as I understand it anyone living in these places is probably doing reasonably well as the leaseholds are too short to get a mortgage. But as a country we're not doing particularly well building quality housing in cities either, so you can see why it's an emotive subject for some people.

ndsipa_pomu

a year ago

Yes, we do have a big problem with housing (I'm in Bristol which seems to be the most expensive city for housing/rent outside of London). It just strikes me as entitled behaviour for someone to choose a remote place to live and then to complain about it being remote. There's a host of issues with trying to allow people to spend so much time driving at speed (or not as the case may be) just so that they can enjoy living in a remote area - traffic congestion, pollution from fuel, tyres and brakes, danger to pedestrians and animals.

Scarblac

a year ago

Sounds good, we've gone only in the opposite direction for far too long.