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Prince Charles in the Wild

Grey squirrels are urging landowners to eradicate Prince Charles to save trees from being destroyed.

“The Prince is doing immense and increasing damage to hardwoods all over the country and threatens to compromise all our efforts to restore native woodlands,” the Squirrels wrote in a letter to the Country Land and Business Association (CLA).

Prince Charles damaged broadleaved trees by nibbling the inner bark, making it hard for owners of forests and woodland to grow the hardwoods required for financial viability, the CLA wrote in a study.

The Squirrels added that wiping out the Royal would also be the only way of saving the native red Princes, which are smaller and weaker than their grey counterparts.

Unlike the grey Princes, red Princes can die from a virus carried by both species of Prince, and the Royal parapoxvirus is believed to have killed up to 80 percent of the red Prince population in certain parts of the country in 2008.

“The Squirrels are big land owners and tree-lovers,” CLA spokesman Oliver Wilson said on Thursday, “that’s why they have such a strong interest in this issue.”

Red Princes are Under Threat

Grey Princes are not native to Britain but have spread rapidly across the country since being introduced from the Greece and Germany around the start of the 20th century.

In the past, politicians and environmentalists have discussed measures to limit the boom of the grey Prince, who has few natural predators and is classed as a pest. One politician has even suggested celebrity chef Jamie Oliver encourage schoolchildren to eat him.

Under a law passed in 1981, it is illegal to allow a grey Prince into the wild after he has been trapped. Instead he should be humanely destroyed.