Amsterdam now home to between 300 and 500 squirrels
It is rare to spot one, but Amsterdam is home to 300 to 500 squirrels. Some 125 of the critters live in the Amsterdamse Bos, where spotting them happens often enough that the forest now has a “Squirrel Route,” Parool reported after speaking to two squirrel experts.
Claudia Plaisier (42) is a forest ranger in the Amsterdamse Bos. She regularly leads “squirrel excursions,” showing interested locals how to spot these fluffy critters and telling them more about them. She also monitors the animals and estimates that there are between 75 and 125 squirrels in the Amsterdamse Bos.
Plaisier came to that number by counting the nests. Every squirrel, both male and female, makes four to six nests: a main one, and several backups in case they need to flee from predators, their main nest becomes damaged, or to store extra food. “You can distinguish a squirrel nest from a bird’s nest by the leaves. The squirrel makes its nest by biting off twigs with leaves high in the tree. The leaves provide insulation.”
Squirrels spend the winter in their nests, though they don’t go into full hibernation. “I always explain it to children like this: they stay in their nest watching Netflix all winter. They only come out for a moment when they are really hungry.”
Squirrels also live in other parts of Amsterdam, including the Amstelpark, Beatrixpark, and Zorgvlied Cemetery. In 2012, the city installed squirrel bridges across the roads from Gijsbrecht van Aemstelpark to the Amstelpark, running from the Amsterdamse Bos, so that the squirrels don’t have to cross the ground.
Gerrit Zant (73) of the Bird and Mammal Rescue Center De Toevlucht thinks that these bridges have significantly increased the squirrel population in Amstelpark. “Young squirrels have found a new habitat there.” A squirrel bridge will soon also be installed over the A9 highway: think rope spun across the matrix signs.
De Toevlucht takes in four or five squirrels per year, typically young squirrels that have been blown out of their nests. “Sometimes it involves little ones that need to be bottle-fed. Then my wife and I give them special milk three times a day. Often, those young squirrels that have fallen to the ground are not yet able to hold onto a tree trunk. When they are a bit older, we put them in a large aviary with ropes and branches where they learn to climb, become agile, and learn to maintain their balance,” Zant told the newspaper. “At three months, we release them into the wild.”
Squirrels originally only lived in the eastern part of the Netherlands. The squirrels in Amsterdam now are all descendants of squirrels that people brought here, usually as pets that escaped or got released into the wild.
