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There’s no denying it, squirrels are cute – a fact as universal now as it was back in 1898 when palm squirrels first arrived at the brand new Perth Zoo.
Initially kept in captivity, the palm squirrels were deliberately released into the zoo grounds for everyone to fawn over their bushy tail, white striped back and acrobatic moves.
We have the Western Australian Acclimatisation Committee, formed in 1896, to thank for the cute balls of fluff. The committee championed the acclimatisation movement, which was all about making European people arriving in Australia ‘more at home’ with their strange new surroundings.
This extended to releasing animals that they were more familiar with, like deer and squirrels, into the Western Australian landscape.
The Perth Zoo palm squirrels had a very happy existence living inside the zoo grounds, but with hindsight, it seems somewhat inevitable that they would escape outside the zoo, right?
Well, not quite. In fact, an edition of the Perth The Daily News published in 1946 claimed that the squirrels will “never run away”.
Only 4 years later, The Daily News changed its tune, reporting that the unthinkable had happened.
“South Perth residents … had seen the squirrels outside the zoo fence.” – The Daily News, 9 August 1950
Despite the call for their demise, the palm squirrels happily found their place out on the streets of South Perth.
NEW “KITS” ON THE BLOCK
But why did the escapees not immediately spread far and wide, in a tale as old as other introduced species to Australia, like rabbits or cane toads?
Palm squirrels prefer eating the fruit from, well, palm trees and other fruit-bearing trees like Moreton Bay figs instead of snacking from the abundant eucalyptus trees found on the streets of urban Perth.
This meant the new kids on the inner city block were stuck on the block but broke into the zoo for food scraps to keep their bellies full.
Lack of food kept the population slow and steady – alongside being munched on by brolga and nankeen night herons – but gradually squirrels could be spotted in places like Como Primary School and the Royal Perth Golf Club in the 1960s.
SQUIRRELLED AWAY
It’s estimated that, at the peak of Perth squirrel-mania, there were around 1000 animals.
That changed in 1973 when squirrels were officially declared vermin by the WA agricultural department of the day due to fears that squirrels would snack on the vines, fruit crops and market gardens found outside of the Perth metropolitan area.
A containment zone was established, and any squirrel found outside a 30km radius of the Perth Zoo was ‘squirrelled away’.
The containment zone strategy continued for a few more decades. Perth squirrels were a pest but tolerated at best – they’re cute!
The seeds of change were sown around this time, and attitudes started to shift about the place of introduced species within the Australian ecosystem.
NUT ANYMORE
Cuteness only goes so far.
Efforts to completely eliminate palm squirrels accelerated during the early 2010s after they were declared an “extreme pest risk” under the Biosecurity and Agriculture Management Act 2007.
A control program to significantly reduce the squirrel population was introduced in 2012, and Perth residents were asked to report any sightings of palm squirrels throughout 2012 to 2016.
The result? Palm squirrels are now considered eradicated in Western Australia.
So how did the palm squirrel go from adored to non-existent in the space of 120 years?
DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE ACORN
The curious incident of the disappearance of the Perth palm squirrel comes down to two competing ideas: the acclimatisation movement and the conservation movement.
While the Australian acclimatisation movement failed in some of its more outlandish goals – there’s no herds of antelopes roaming around the WA Wheatbelt for example – the untold damage of introduced species like foxes and rabbits on the Australian landscape and native animals eventually took its toll.
In the latter part of the 1900s, the shift towards the conservation movement recognised that Australian animals were worth fighting for.
The squirrels may now be a warm and fuzzy memory, but fortunately there are an abundance of cute Western Australian animals to squeal over – think quokkas, numbats and bandicoots. They are the ones that require our attention before they too go the way of the squirrels: gone.
