Tiny rare dormice are reintroduced in Bedfordshire for the first time since 2001
To bolster genetic diversity and prevent the species from going extinct, the People's Trust For Endangered Species has reintroduced 10 rare dormice into woodland in Bedfordshire. Watch as the tiny rodents are released into the wid. Video: ZSL
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00:00 Dormouse populations have dropped by 70% since the year 2000
00:03 and their range has declined by 20 English counties in the last 100 years
00:07 which is why we're here in this woodland in Bedfordshire today
00:10 to reintroduce more Dormouse to the wild and to improve the genetics of the
00:14 local population here that we reintroduced in 2001. The Dormouse
00:18 reintroduction program started in 1993. We have reintroduced Dormouse to 13
00:23 counties and 36 reintroductions at 26 different sites.
00:27 It's very much a partnership program. The Dormouse are bred by
00:30 the Common Dormouse Captive Breeders Group. They're quarantined at the
00:33 Zoological Society of London and also at Painting Zoo as well
00:36 and then of course we work with local landowners to find reintroduction sites
00:39 and also to make sure there's an ongoing continuity of management
00:43 to enable Dormouse to thrive into the future. The history of these woods is
00:47 that they're ancient semi-natural woodlands so
00:50 they've been here for thousands of years and it's got really good habitat for
00:54 Dormice with the tall standard trees and also the most important bit of the
00:59 shrubs underneath the big trees. The volunteers are really important because
01:02 they're our eyes and ears in the forest and they're the people who have been
01:06 doing the monitoring of the Dormouse population
01:08 so the people counting them and they're using the nest boxes
01:11 inspecting them once a month and that gives us a year-on-year comparison of
01:15 how the population is doing and it's thriving in
01:18 the woodland and they're even finding nests outside of the woodland as well.
01:23 The Dormouse come into quarantine with ourselves and Painting Zoo for eight
01:26 weeks prior to their release and during that time we make sure that
01:30 they're not carrying any non-native parasites that could cause
01:33 disease in the wildlife where they're being released
01:35 and we also make sure that they're healthy through regular health checks
01:39 to make sure that they are fit for release, they're going to do well in the
01:42 wild. We want them to be able to find food, we want them to be able to breed
01:46 and survive. After today we're going to come back in
01:48 10 days time and at that point we're going to give them another health check
01:52 to make sure that everything is still looking great
01:54 before we release them into the wild.