White squirrels on Johns Island, SC: where they've been seen and what they are

Johns Island has white squirrels, but the paper trail is thin. We found one account from County staff and a 2013 newspaper column built on reader letters. The rest is website comments and a Tripadvisor review. We found no count or study of the island’s squirrels and no wildlife agency report on them. We also haven’t confirmed a current sighting ourselves. So this guide keeps what’s documented here apart from what’s known about white squirrels in general.

Are there white squirrels on Johns Island?

Yes, according to County staff and residents, but nobody knows how many.

The strongest account comes from the Charleston County Greenbelt Program. Its August 2022 Naturalist Corner column says staff spotted a white squirrel in a tree a few years earlier, during yearly monitoring of the greenbelt property around the Angel Oak. A frequent visitor told them that she and others had seen white squirrels too.

The Post and Courier followed up on a white squirrel column with reader letters in April 2013, and several were about Johns Island. That’s the only newspaper coverage of the island’s white squirrels we could find.

Where have white squirrels been seen on Johns Island?

Mostly around the Angel Oak. These are all the island reports we found, oldest first:

Reported	Where	Source
After September 1989	Along the river behind a small farm off Chisolm Road	Resident’s letter, Post and Courier
May 2010	Angel Oak; the writer described a shy squirrel, at least one	Website comment
November 2011	Angel Oak; white with black marking on the head and down the back	Website comment
February 2012	The lane near the Angel Oak	Website comment
May 2012 and January 2016	The writer’s own property on the island, with two in the front yard in 2012	Comments that appear to be from one person, on one site and another
Around late 2012	The dirt lane past the Angel Oak	Reader’s letter, Post and Courier
Printed April 2013, sighting undated	Near the Presbyterian church on the island	Reader’s letter about a friend, who made a quilt with a white squirrel in it
April 2013	Angel Oak; one in the lane with a gray smudge along its back, one all white in a grove at the edge of the grounds	Website comment
March 2019	Angel Oak	Tripadvisor review by a reviewer listed as from Johns Island
A few years before August 2022	Greenbelt property around the Angel Oak	County column

None of this tells you how many white squirrels there are. Most of the reports are unverified, and one squirrel could account for several of them.

We left one report off the list. A May 2025 comment says the writer saw one on Johns Island the day before, but it gives no color and sits in a thread about black squirrels. The Institute’s staff reply thanked the writer for reporting a white squirrel. If that’s what it was, it’s the newest island report we know of.

Can you see a white squirrel at the Angel Oak?

You might, but don’t drive out just for that. Seven of the 10 reports above came from the tree or right beside it. The City estimates about 400,000 people visit the tree each year, so that cluster could simply show where the most people are looking.

The spots people name are the dirt lane past the tree and a grove at the edge of the grounds. The park is free, and our Angel Oak guide has the hours and rules. The City bans food and drinks on or around the tree, so leave the peanuts in the car. If you want more for the day, try our list of things to do on Johns Island.

Are Johns Island’s white squirrels albino?

Probably not, though that comes from sightings, not tests. The eyes tell you. An albino squirrel’s eyes look pink, red or light blue, and a leucistic squirrel’s are dark, according to Georgia DNR and Columbus Metro Parks.

The local evidence leans leucistic:

• County staff wrote that their squirrel appeared to have dark eyes, though it was hard to tell from a distance.
• Two commenters described gray or black markings on the head or back. Georgia DNR says albinos have no dark pigment anywhere on their bodies.
• A reader who watched one on the Angel Oak lane for several minutes called it “definitely not albino.”
• The White Squirrel Institute’s staff account wrote in 2024 that South Carolina’s white squirrels are typically leucistic.

	Albino	Leucistic
Pigment	None; the animal can’t make melanin	Reduced or missing in some or all of the body
Eyes	Pink, red or light blue	Dark
Coat	All white	White, sometimes with gray or dark patches
Vision	Often poor	Normal, says the White Squirrel Institute

Both are eastern gray squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis. Sources disagree on how the coat is inherited. The Nature Conservancy calls leucism a recessive trait, while Brevard’s county library says a dominant gene sets the color pattern in that town’s squirrels.

How did white squirrels get to Johns Island?

Nobody knows. One local story points to Hurricane Hugo, which came ashore near Sullivan’s Island at midnight on Sept. 22, 1989.

The Post and Courier reported in 2013, from an account by his daughter, that R.W. Cook bred and kept white squirrels on Johns Island for many years, until Hugo destroyed his cages and the squirrels went free. He became well known for them for a time and brought some to the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition.

The same column printed a letter from a resident whose family had a small farm off Chisolm Road until 1995. No white squirrels appeared there until after Hugo, the letter says, when a group moved in along the river behind the house. The gray squirrels chased them off the feeder.

The timing fits, but the column doesn’t connect the two accounts, and we found nothing else that does. White squirrels also turn up without help. The County column says they could be spotted anywhere in the gray squirrel’s native range, and Georgia DNR says they appear either when squirrels are born with too little melanin or when people trap and release them. We think Cook’s squirrels are a good candidate, but they aren’t a proven source.

One search result can mislead here. The Peculiar Squirrels of Johns Island, a 2016 blog post, is a fable about gray squirrels that become flying squirrels. It isn’t history, and it isn’t about white squirrels.

How rare is a white squirrel?

Uncommon almost everywhere, and we found no national count. The numbers that exist are rough or local:

• Albino gray squirrels: about 1 in 100,000 births, according to mammalogists cited by Georgia DNR.
• Most white squirrel colonies: 20 or fewer squirrels, and less than 10 percent of the local population, by the same column.
• Olney, Ill.: a few hundred white squirrels, about 12 percent of the population, according to the White Squirrel Institute. The Institute and The Nature Conservancy describe these as albino.
• Brevard, N.C.: about 1,000 white squirrels, almost a third of the population in the study area, by the Institute’s estimate. Those are leucistic.
• Johns Island: unknown.

Brevard’s colony traces to a pair of white squirrels a local family got in 1949. By 1951, both were loose.

A white coat should make a squirrel easy prey, and The Nature Conservancy says as much. The County column says large populations tend to be in towns with few predators and residents who prize the squirrels. Georgia DNR’s column raises the idea that hawks may not recognize a white squirrel as food, and it says cats have been blamed for declines in Olney. As far as we know, nobody has studied any of this on Johns Island.

Are there white squirrels elsewhere around Charleston?

Yes, in scattered reports. The White Squirrel Institute says it has received sightings around the Charleston area, in an undated FAQ.

In the 2013 Post and Courier column, the writer had seen one in Riverland Terrace. Readers added Crowfield Plantation in Goose Creek, Moncks Corner, Daniel Island, a neighborhood near Hollywood and the Forest Trail area of Isle of Palms.

Closer to us, a 2012 commenter said there were lots on Wadmalaw Island, and a 2022 commenter described a few living for years in a Meggett neighborhood. The newest report we found in the area is from Goose Creek, where an April 2026 commenter saw three together.

Are white squirrels protected in South Carolina?

We found no state law that treats a white squirrel differently from a gray one. We checked the state’s game code and the state wildlife agency’s permit pages, but a local rule could exist that we missed.

State law lists squirrels as small game. It also lets a property owner capture a squirrel damaging the home or property within 100 yards of the house without a permit, as SCDNR explains. A squirrel captured that way must be destroyed unless the owner has a state permit to relocate it. For questions about permits, SCDNR’s number is 803-734-3887.

The same chapter names two bird and squirrel sanctuaries in Charleston County: Bayview Acres in Mount Pleasant and part of Drayton on Ashley, by the Ashley River. Neither is on Johns Island. Brevard goes further for its own squirrels, with a 1986 city ordinance that made the city limits a squirrel sanctuary.

What should you do if you see one?

Keep your distance, look at its eyes if you can, and report it. Two places want to know:

• The White Squirrel Institute, a nonprofit in Brevard, takes reports from anywhere. Its form asks whether the eyes were dark or pink, and where and when you saw it.
• Tell us. Send the date and spot, plus a photo if you got one. A dated photo that shows the eyes would be better evidence than most of what’s in this guide.