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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/28/im-proud-of-them-going-out-into-the-world-young-naturalists-on-their-quest-to-save-harvest-mice>
"Doing somersaults in the corner of a field in Devon this week were the fluffy
results of an audacious wildlife project by two 13-year-old girls.
Best friends Eva Wishart and Emily Smith had become devoted to harvest mice,
and were upset, a couple of years ago, to find out the species is threatened in
England due to farming practices and habitat loss.
The two girls took matters into their own hands and decided to replenish local
harvest mice stocks themselves. In the two years since, they have bred dozens
of the tiny rodents in their garages and on Wednesday they released 250 of them
into a nature reserve near Wishart’s home.
Harvest mice are Britain’s smallest rodent, at just 70 millimetres long, with
sandy fur that helps them to blend into the grasses in which they nest. The
mice are an important prey species for larger animals, and a major predator of
insects that can be agricultural pests. Harvest mice are the only mammals in
Britain to have a prehensile tail, which means they can grasp or hold objects
such as grass stalks.
They were once ubiquitous in autumn as they made their nests in the grasses
that sprang up after harvest. But for the last few years, their numbers have
been reducing under threat from modern farming practices as farmers now spray
pesticides, crop the same field multiple times a year and use combine
harvesters, all practices that are thought to have decimated the population.
Wishart and Smith, the two young naturalists, raised the mice in 27 tanks in
their homes, with some sourced from a tip by Smith’s mother. Honeysuckle and
hazel, plants the mice love to climb, were harvested from Wishart’s garden to
place in the tanks. As harvest mice are native to the UK there are no licences
required to breed and release them into the wild."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
