Forging Connections, One Dormouse at a Time
Wilderness Notes #4
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It’s not every day you get to commute to a meeting from your house (which is not even on a road) by walking along a long distance footpath - The West Mendip Way - then diverting to follow a stream before taking a sharp right turn into a wood.
My neighbour, Julie, led the way. It was still early and the grass gleamed with frost; a sharp sun slanted through hazel thickets, already hung with constellations of catkins, and mist shimmered over the stream. Julie, a school teacher, is a newly-minted landowner; she and her husband have just bought two fields, and we own a mini conservation project in the Mendips: Wild Pinebeck. We had been invited to attend a Dormouse Day, run by Somerset Wildlife Trust, for farmers and landowners to learn more about how we can help dormice.
How could I say no? Dormice are unbelievably cute with their round sloe-black eyes, bushy tails and soft sandy fur. Unfortunately, the hazel dormouse, Muscardinus avellanarius, is in trouble. In the last fifty years their numbers have dropped by 72%. Unlike mice, they live at very low population densities and only have up to four babies a year. Because climate change is causing longer wetter springs, they often don’t produce litters early in the year, or even breed at all. And this is a species that only lives for around three years and has a 50% mortality rate in winter.
Julie and I dodge through the hazels, clambering up a sheer bank to reach the farm at the top. At least, it had been a farm and a campsite but the new owner has decided to get rid of the campsite and devote the whole area to wildlife, which is wonderful news, if not for the campers. We are a slightly motley bunch: the new landowner, the farmer who used to own this farm and still owns parts of the wood, the head of the Dormouse Vounteers, Lila Morris, the Mendip Conservation Officer, the next landowners along the hill and an ecologist from Forestry England.
Over mugs of instant coffee, we talk to Ian White. If anyone knows about dormice, it’s Ian. He’s been the Dormouse Officer for the People’s Trust for Endangered Species since 2006 and manages their Dormouse Reintroduction Programme.
Climate change is not the only problem dormice face, Ian explains. Dormice need deciduous woodland with an understory of scrub, but this is no longer a common habitat. Farming practises haven’t helped, with many hedges being grubbed out or flailed into neat rectangles. In the past, hedges were ‘laid’ - allowed to grow strong and sturdy, the trunks interwoven to keep farm animals in.
“Dormice need hedgerows that are wide, tall and bushy,” Ian says.
Although they’re called hazel dormice, their diet is incredibly varied, as they eat flowers, leaf buds, insects and rosehips. Dormice are a Champion Species for this area, but cute as they are, and much as we’d love to have dormice at Wild Pinebeck, we’re not managing our land for a particular species.
Ian agrees: “You can micromanage for any species, but it’s not helpful.” Dormice are a Champion Species, he says, because they’re a key indicator of a healthy ecosystem. If you have dormice, then you have a habitat with a wealth of different plants that will be suitable for many species. Plus they’re cute.
I think about our rewilding project, Wild Pinebeck. We have two deciduous woods with an understory of scrub. Sadly, the woods are mostly ash, most of which are infected with the ash dieback virus. The scrub was an impenetrable thicket of holly, which we have severely thinned. But now, we hope new species will start to appear.
So far I’ve planted fifty oaks and hawthorns in Bluebell and Lilac Wood; I have thirty hazels to plant. Three years ago, we dug in a thousand trees in a hedgerow: hazel, hawthorn, field maple, dog wood and dog rose, interspersed with rowan trees, along with a silver birch copse and a mini heritage orchard. We leave the ivy and the brambles to bloom: a nectar snack for a dormouse in winter and spring.
Soon we may be dormouse-ready.
We walk back into the wood with Ian. Volunteers have put up dormouse boxes here, but Ian shakes his head. This is not ideal habitat. Years ago these large stands of hazels had been coppiced, but now they’re thick and overgrown. They’re relatively far apart - too great a distance for a dormouse to easily climb from tree to tree.
We scramble down the bank and Ian lights up. This, he tells us, is perfect dormouse habitat. We face a dense tangle of scrub: hazel interspersed with alder and willow, shot through with the dark green of conifers; bramble, bryony and honeysuckle festoon the outer edges.
What we need, Ian says, is: “Connectivity, connectivity, connectivity!”
And I think, yes, that is exactly, what we need: connectivity between people, between places, between habitats, between plants, between species.
And we are creating a living connectivity, right here, right now.
One day, if we can connect before it’s too late, I hope we’ll see a dormouse, curled tight as a ball, snoozing and snoring in our fledgling hazel trees.