A researcher looked into the conservation history of the urban Eastern Gray Squirrel, and their journey was more man-made than most people suspect.
Etienne Benson, an assistant professor in the University of Pennsylvania's Department of History and Sociology of Science has looked into the past of a number of species including orcas, grizzly bears, and tigers, a University of Pennsylvania news release reported.
"I wanted to write about something a bit closer to home, about things we see and encounter every day," Benson said in the news release. "I wanted to shift the focus to the urban and the quotidian and, in some sense, the trivial, to see what we can learn by looking at trivial nature, or nature that is at risk of being interpreted as trivial."
Many people believe the Eastern Gray Squirrel came to U.S. cities along with the Europeans; in reality the nut-loving rodents were intentionally introduced in a number of urban areas.
"The study relied on published accounts in historical newspapers from the 19th century and early 20th century but also sources found in manuscript archives, such as the journal entries of Harvard ornithologist William Brewster and the institutional records of the Smithsonian Institution and the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass. I also used recent ecological and biological studies of squirrels to help explain how squirrels may have spread through the urban landscape," Benson told Headlines and Global News in an e-mail.
By the mid-19th century squirrels had all but disappeared from U.S. urban landscapes. The first reintroduction Benson was able to find was in Philadelphia's Franklin Square in 1847. Introductions in Boston and New Haven followed shortly after.
The purpose of reintroducing the squirrels was to "beautify and add interest to the parks," Benson said in the news release.
The squirrels may have also been prized as a way to "cure [children] of their tendency toward cruelty," according to literature written by Ernest Thompson Seton, the cofounder of the Boy Scouts, the researcher discovered.
The "squirrel experiments" ran through the 1860s, until the majority of rodents were killed off out of concern they would threaten local bird populations and start a chain reaction that would affect insects as well.
Squirrel reintroductions started up once again in the 1870s. The rodents were released in a number of cities including New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. By the 1880s there were about 1,500 squirrels in Central Park.
"Many other [animals] were introduced in the 19th century as part of urban beautification campaigns, including sparrows, starlings, chipmunks, peacocks, and other species. Of this group of intentionally introduced animals, gray squirrels and their close relatives, fox squirrels, were the only mammals that really flourished. Pigeons, which also flourished, were a different case: partly domesticated and never the subject of a coordinated campaign of introduction the way squirrels were. Raccoons obviously also flourished in the city, but not because people wanted them to," Benson told HNGN.
Benson believes urbanites' attitudes towards squirrels changed from affection to annoyance in the 20th century.
"There is a shift at the end of the 20th century, where it becomes almost a crime or a sin to feed animals, which is entirely the opposite of where it was earlier," he said in the news release.
Benson plans to continue his studies on the history of urban animals.
"I'm broadening beyond a focus on any particular animal to try to understand how humans, nonhuman forms of life, and technological systems are woven together to make up 'city nature' as we know it," Benson told HNGN.
