Appropriate description Muddy, nature will find a way if we don’t manage to wipe ourselves out.
Does that include the european interlopers as well Brucy?
Donkeyman!
Bilby, cute little thing.
Who is importing and propogating this diseas ?
Could it be lettuce farmers?
Could it be vegan activists?
Could it be an alliance of the two?
Argument for farmers would be that rabbits eat a couple of lettuce
a night !
Argument for vegans would be that the disease eradicates a meat
source from the supply chain and also allows more lettuce for
vegan consumption!
IMO the alliance is more likely?
Donkeyman!
Oops! looks like l’ve got my virus mixed up with my genes!
Sorry!
I could be wrong, Cinders, but I read something about this recently, and I believe it said that the sterility or infertility is reversible.
I wish I could find the article now, but I think they were experimenting by lacing the grey squirrels food/nuts with a chemical that made females infertile, but if they stopped lacing the food, their fertility returned after not too long.
I’ll have to see if I can dig the article out and show you.
Who says they are not?
You can always eat them:
They look OK cooked.
This bloke from Kent does some interesting wild camping videos on his channel. I started watching his videos purely because I grew up in Kent.
I fancy eating a squirrel about as much as I fancy eating a hedgehog, Bruce.
No thanks. 
I have never eaten a squirrel obviously but I would have thought that they are much the same as a rabbit. Many, many decades ago in the 1960s I was working as a tech for the PMG in the bush - we used to camp at night and shoot something for dinner (mostly rabbit in those days) which we cooked in a camp oven.
One evening one of the blokes shot a fox so we cooked some of it, it smelt and tasted absolutely foul and it brought to mind Oscar Wilde’s comment about, “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!”
Yes, I can well imagine a fox would be inedible.
Everything about them stinks to high heaven doesn’t it, so I imagine it would taint the meat as well.
Could this be the article.
A another reason why grey squirrels dominate is because they have a better memory!
Red and grey squirrels will bury their food supplies, but it’s the grey squirrels that will always remember where they buried it. Red squirrels on the other hand are a little forgetful, giving grey squirrels the opportunity to steal their food …
Maybe the greys watch where the reds bury nuts, and remove them
Immediately the reds bugger off?
Thus it looks like the reds cant find their nuts later in the year?
Also another reason for their survival superiority!
Which brings into question the greys ethics or lack of?
The theiving bastards!
Donkeyman!
They are simply opportunistic. Does seem a bit unfair, to pinch another’s nuts.
Yes Cinders, but for a squirrell to act like a banker??
I ask you??
Donkeman!
It was the greys that gave the reds squirrel pox, greys carry it but don’t get ill, the pox killed most of the reds in the areas they were before,which is why people want to get rid of the greys. The greys are in most every area of Britain, the reds only in a few places now & this is because the conservationists keep the greys out where the reds are, but getting rid of greys won’t necessarily mean the reds make a come back everywhere they were before.
I have seen reds on Brownsea island, they are beautiful animals, there are no greys there, it’s an island & if one does try to get there it is immediately culled.
By who Tiffy, l hope your not relying on uk border controls?
Donkeyman!
I have edited my post because it didn’t make sense, the pox killed the reds not the greys, stupid me, read before you post Tiff.
The conservationists cull the greys in the areas we still have red squirrels.
Borders don’t matter to the greys, they will sneak in if they can & they have, but Brownsea remains grey free, sadly it’s a battle to stop hem getting into other areas not surrounded by sea. Though to eradicate them now they are here, in areas without reds, seems barbaric.
We still have Myxomatosis and it’s rumoured that it’s deliberately spread to get rid of the rabbits!
Very pleased to say we have only red squirrels and if anyone is found trying to bring a grey over here (though no idea why they would), they be very heavily fined.