England's Red Squirrels Rebound from Deadly Squirrel Pox Outbreak

Red squirrel populations along the British coast in Sefton seem to have rebounded from a 2008 squirrel pox outbreak.

Squirrel pox, also known as squirrel fibroma is a viral infection that produces multiple tumors on the skin of squirrels. It can be deadly to squirrels. Populations of red squirrel populations had fallen 85 percent at the Seaforth Coastal Reserve, according to the University of Liverpool, where research on the squirrel pox outbreak and the subsequent fall and rebound of red squirrel populations was conducted.

In North America, squirrel pox is often carried by grey squirrels and fox squirrels, which rarely die from the disease. Red squirrels, however, can succumb to squirrel pox, which is worrisome for scientists, as red squirrel populations in the UK are not as strong as that of grey squirrels.

"We have had a unique opportunity to study the dynamics of the squirrel pox disease. So far, our findings indicate that they are recovering from the disease which affected them so severely in 2008," said Julian Chantrey, from Liverpool's Institute of Integrative Biology.

But the population of red squirrels on the Sefton coast appears to have adapted.

"There are even indications that a few of the surviving squirrels appear to have antibody to the virus, which would suggest that they have recovered from infection in the past," Chantrey said. "More recently, we have identified a red squirrel that recovered naturally from squirrel pox and was released back into the population."

However, Chantrey pointed out, there is not sufficient evidence to suggest whether there the significant resistance to the virus in the whole squirrel population that would be needed to prevent a future outbreak.