Like many of my friends and colleagues, my fascination with the natural world and dedication to protecting it started in childhood. My earliest and fondest memories were made in the British countryside. I was fortunate enough to have two biology teachers as parents, so my weekends were spent in local woodlands where my curiosity was nurtured and encouraged.

A combination of time spent in nature, and my choice of books, Brambly Hedge, Beatrix Potter, and The Chronicles of Narnia, built an almost fantastical picture of the country I grew up in. To me, our hedgerows were filled with families of mice wearing acorn-cup hats, the woods were home to wise, bespectacled badgers, and hyperactive red squirrels carried secret messages from tree to tree.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I began to realise that not only did the world not look like an illustration from Brambly Hedge, but my connection to nature had been a great privilege that most of my friends had not had access to. So, when I reached the age of deciding what I wanted to do with my life, it was obvious to me that restoring our native species and increasing access to nature were my highest priorities.

I started my degree in Conservation Biology in 2021. In 2023, I did a placement on a beaver reintroduction project in Plymouth. What was supposed to be a three-month placement turned into a ten-month full-time volunteer role, a part-time summer job, and a lifelong beaver obsession. By the time I returned to finish my final year of university in 2024, I was adamant that I wanted to work in native species reintroduction and recovery.

My taste for reintroduction success only grew stronger when the law changed in 2025, allowing beavers to be reintroduced into the wild, thereby securing a future for wild beavers in the British landscape. With a positive future for beavers in sight, I turned my attention to another iconic native species in desperate need of help: the red squirrel. I started working for the Northumberland Wildlife Trust as a Project Assistant for the Red Squirrel Recovery Network on the 1st of April 2026.

The red squirrel (Latin name Sciurus vulgaris), Sciurus meaning “shade tail,” referring to the squirrel’s iconic bushy tail, and vulgaris relating to how widespread it once was across Europe and Asia, is, unfortunately, no longer common in the UK.

Once widespread across the British Isles, red squirrel numbers have been devastated over the last century, with fewer than 39,000 individuals now existing in isolated populations in the north of England, Ireland, and southern Scotland. Although they have disappeared from most of England, they have not been forgotten. They appear in many of our favourite classic children’s stories, where they are depicted as quirky, chatty, and mischievous.

The most famous of these are Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, featuring a hyperactive, mischievous squirrel whose relentless riddles get him on the wrong side of a grumpy owl, and C. S. Lewis’s character Patterwig in The Chronicles of Narnia. Patterwig’s talkative, loyal, and polite nature makes him a charming and endearing character.

Indeed the difficulty was to get him to stop talking, for, like all squirrels, he was a chatterer. He welcomed Caspian at once and asked if he would like a nut, and Caspian said thanks, he would. But as Patterwig went bounding away to fetch it, Trufflehunter whispered in Caspian’s ear, ‘Don’t look. Look the other way. It is very bad manners among squirrels to watch anyone going to his store or to look as if you wanted to know where it was.’ – C. S. Lewis

Both authors took inspiration from the world around them, bestowing endearing characteristics onto our native wildlife. However, red squirrels have been a staple of British folklore long before the invention of writing. In oral storytelling, the noble and chatty red squirrel was said to be the messenger of the forest and, due to its agile nature and love of trees, it was said he was able to travel from one end of the country to the other without ever touching the ground.

The love and adoration of this species are woven into our country’s history, which makes the red squirrel’s demise at the hands of humans even more tragic.

The problem began in the late 1800s, when grey squirrels were brought over from America as an ornamental garden species. Grey squirrels are larger, bolder, and able to exist in higher densities than almost any of our native wildlife. These characteristics have allowed them to spread rapidly through both countryside and urban areas, not only outcompeting red squirrels for food and territory but also bringing disease with them.

This disease, known as squirrelpox, is carried asymptomatically by grey squirrels but is devastating to red squirrels. In reds, it is not only fatal but causes a particularly distressing death, affecting the eyes and skin.

The threat posed by grey squirrels has been the main focus of conservation efforts, with grey squirrel control being the only thing preventing our remaining red populations from extinction. However, with new funding from the National Lottery, the Red Squirrel Recovery Network is now working with local communities to raise awareness and share knowledge about how best to support red squirrel recovery.

This community-focused approach not only aids conservation efforts but also helps people reconnect with nature and feel proud of their native wildlife. We recognise that unlike Mesolithic storytellers, native wildlife isn’t on people’s front doors anymore and we will not protect what we cannot see, so creating access to nature and inspiring people to go out and find their native species is vital if we are conserve it. 

I am inspired by the passion and commitment I have already seen in local communities. I believe in a future where red squirrels are seen from our windows, not just in storybooks, and I am excited to be part of making that a reality.