Japanese city to cull squirrels as they damage ancient wooden buildings

Environmental activists say non-native squirrels pose threat to Japan’s biodiversity and support their culling

Japanese authorities have decided to cull non-native “invasive” squirrels which are harming ancient buildings and wooden shrines and causing damage to the local ecosystem in the city of Kamakura.

The city government of Kamakura reportedly wants to spend the equivalent of £38,000 to deal with the squirrel problem.

According to the Mainichi newspaper, they plan to give cages to residents, put up posters asking tourists not to feed the squirrels, and hire specialists to humanely cull the animals, Formosan squirrels.

Environmental activists in Kamakura also recognise the threat posed by the invasive species to Japan’s biodiversity and have supported the initiative to cull them.

Currently, more than 150 animal and plant species are considered invasive in Japan and are listed by the environment ministry as alien invaders.

In 2000, local authorities in Kamakura tried to control the Formosan squirrel population by catching and euthanising 69 of them. However, instead of decreasing, the number of squirrels kept rising and reached a high of around 1,571 in 2018.

This year, officials predict an even higher number, with 1,533 squirrels captured in just the first eight months of 2023.

The South China Morning Post reported that municipalities on the Miura Peninsula haven’t experienced notable changes but the rate of increase in Kamakura has been unusually high, with officials describing it as “abnormal”.

Posters and notices have started appearing across Kamakura informing residents of the damage the squirrels have caused.

“They look cute, but they are causing so much damage in the town. It has become a real problem for a lot of people,” an unidentified Kamakura city official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Meanwhile, an official told Mainichi that “it may be that the intense heat this summer has made it impossible to gather mountain nuts, which are food for squirrels, so they have started to appear in the urban area of Kamakura”.