Eat grey squirrel burgers to save red squirrels, argues Gareth Wyn Jones

Popular Welsh hill farmer Gareth Wyn Jones has taken to the national airwaves to call on the public to eat grey squirrel burgers as part of a move to preserve red squirrels.

Gareth defended the use of grey squirrel meat, saying it will help to "protect our red squirrels, they're beautiful, they're in danger".

He continued: "It's causing our red squirrels to be taken out of the equation so every single one of these grey squirrels we're eating is going to give room for the red squirrel."

Gareth will be running the pop-up restaurant Cwtch Kitchen at the Welsh Game Fair on 9 and 10 September and plans to put the burgers on the menu at the event.

"By promoting shooting and taking grey squirrels out of the equation, we're going to help the reds, but as well we're going to have a tasty meal," he told Good Morning Britain.

"We're going to have a burger that's very healthy, it's going to be very nutritious."

However, Gareth was met with opposition from PETA, who labelled grey squirrel consumption "cruel and wrong" and claimed it was "totally unnecessary to kill animals in order to eat them".

The introduction of the grey squirrel from North America has caused the once common native red squirrel to go on the retreat, disappearing from great swathes of the country. The total UK population is now thought to be as low as 120,000 animals, of which more than three quarters are found in Scotland.

Last year, the Countryside Alliance stepped in to publicly defend ITV's This Morning after it was criticised for airing a cooking demonstration involving the meat of a culled grey squirrel.