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How Many Squirrels Are in the World? Nobody Counts Them

How many squirrels are in the world has no census answer, but 285 species and known densities give a defensible estimate. Why the round numbers online are invented.

By Salma 3 min read Save to Pinterest — opens Pinterest in a new tab
A red squirrel with ear tufts perched on a branch, eating a nut
Photo: 631372, Pixabay Content License, via Pixabay
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There is no answer, and that is worth saying plainly before the estimates. Nobody counts the world’s squirrels, no agency is funded to, and the confident round numbers that circulate online have no method behind them.

What does exist is a species count and good regional density figures, which is enough to reason about the scale honestly.

What is actually known

The species count is solid. Around 285 species in the family Sciuridae, spread across every continent except Antarctica and Australia. The family is much wider than the garden animal:

  • Tree squirrels — greys, reds, fox squirrels, and tropical species
  • Ground squirrels — including the thirteen-lined and California ground squirrels
  • Chipmunks — 25 species, all but one in North America
  • Marmots and prairie dogs — the largest members of the family
  • Flying squirrels — about 50 species, nocturnal and rarely seen

Regional populations are estimated where someone paid for the work. These come from habitat area multiplied by measured density, not from counting animals.

Where numbers exist at all
PopulationEstimateHow it is arrived at
UK grey squirrel~2.5 millionHabitat area × density; likely an undercount
UK red squirrel~140,000Same method, concentrated in Scotland
US eastern greyNo national estimateState game surveys only, not summed
World totalNoneNo agency, no method

Why a world total is not possible

Three things defeat it, and they are worth understanding because they apply to most wild-animal population questions.

Density varies several-fold with food. A deciduous wood in a good mast year — heavy acorn and beech crop — supports many times the squirrels it does after a failure. Counting in one year and scaling gives a number that is wrong in the next.

Most of the range is unsurveyed. Tropical squirrel species across South America, Africa and Southeast Asia have never been counted anywhere, and some are known only from a handful of specimens.

The animals turn over fast. Mortality in the first year runs well over half, so the population on any given day is not the population a season later. A census would describe a moment, not a quantity.

Note

When a figure like “there are 2 billion squirrels” appears without a source, it is almost always someone multiplying a density they found once by a land area. The arithmetic works and the answer means nothing, because the density came from a particular wood in a particular year.

A defensible way to think about the scale

If you want a sense of magnitude rather than a number:

  • The UK, at 94,000 square miles with heavy suburban woodland, supports an estimated few million greys.
  • Temperate deciduous forest covers a vastly larger area across North America, Europe and East Asia.
  • Many hundreds of millions of tree squirrels worldwide is a plausible order of magnitude. Hundreds of millions, not billions, and not a figure anyone can defend to a decimal place.

That is as far as the evidence goes, and anyone offering you more precision than that is extrapolating too.

Common questions

How many squirrel species are there?

About 285 species in the family Sciuridae, which is far broader than the tree squirrels most people picture. It includes ground squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, prairie dogs and flying squirrels. The tree squirrels — the greys, reds and fox squirrels of gardens and parks — are a few dozen of those.

Is there a global squirrel population count?

No. No agency counts squirrels globally, and there is no methodology that would make it possible — they are small, widespread, short-lived and not economically tracked the way game or livestock are. Any specific worldwide figure you see online is invented or extrapolated without a stated method.

How many squirrels live in one acre?

In good deciduous woodland with reliable nut crops, roughly two to six grey squirrels per acre is the range field studies report, and suburban gardens with feeders can run higher. Poor habitat such as conifer plantation supports a fraction of that. Density varies several-fold with food supply within the same region, which is exactly why extrapolating to a global total fails.

How many grey squirrels are in the UK?

Estimates have long been quoted around 2.5 million, against roughly 140,000 red squirrels, though these figures are extrapolations from habitat area and density rather than counts, and more recent work suggests the grey figure may be substantially higher. They are useful as orders of magnitude and should not be quoted as precise.

Are squirrel numbers rising or falling?

It depends entirely on which squirrel and where. Grey squirrels are stable or expanding across their introduced range in Europe; red squirrels have contracted sharply in England and Wales. Several ground squirrel species are threatened. 'Squirrels' is too broad a category for the question to have one answer.

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