News

Jen Bousfield has been monitoring dormice in five woodlands in Devon since 2010. Earlier this year she had a close encounter with a dormouse that she wasn’t expecting: One evening at the beginning of April I received a telephone call. It was a friend from our Orchard Group who lives about half a mile away, …

PTES staff, volunteers, and conservation partners unite to restore a cherished native species in Leicestershire In March 2025, excitement rippled through the Bradgate Park Trust volunteer team. A new species reintroduction was on the horizon – but which one? Red squirrels? Pine martens? In April, the mystery was unveiled: hazel dormice were to make a …

People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and NatureSpace are collaborating to develop survey methodology and protocol to produce a more robust map of dormouse presence and distribution within a county. The project is being piloted this year in Sussex, which although well within the dormouse range does not appear to have the widespread populations of …

Outside your window, there are some ferocious predators: from insects to insectivores, and caterpillars to cats, fierce carnivores prowl around every corner. A lot of wild mammals, although not strictly carnivores, will eat other animals occasionally. But one group is known for it: the Carnivora, which includes the cat-, dog- and weasel families. They are …

Returning dormice to Leicestershire This week, we’ve reintroduced over 20 rare hazel dormice into a secret woodland location in Leicestershire, creating the county’s only known population of the tiny mammals. This is a landmark conservation effort which will bring rare hazel dormice back to an area where they once existed. This summer’s release builds on …

2025 marks a decade of the National Water Vole Monitoring Programme (NWVMP) – a huge milestone for the UK’s largest citizen science survey dedicated to water voles. Over the past decade, thousands of volunteers have submitted records of water voles from more than 2,200 sites nationwide. To everyone who has taken part: thank you. Whether …

Many species that are habitat specialists – organisms that rely on specific environments or food sources – are declining in what is becoming a worrying trend. One such specialist facing this threat is hazel dormice (Muscardinus avellanarius), a species intimately linked with certain woodland habitats. Dormouse populations in Britain have plummeted by a staggering 78% …

Overall 2024 was a warm and unsettled year for the UK. It was the fourth warmest year on record in Britain. Eight months had temperatures above their usual average, with February being the second warmest on record, May the warmest, and December the fifth warmest. Winter and spring were both well above average for mean …

New applications for the Sustainable Farming Initiatives (SFIs) have been suspended with no warning. A Defra press release optimistically framed this as ‘having reached its completion’ as the budget had been ‘successfully allocated’. There will be a reset and a new scheme will be announced in summer this year. But what does this mean in …

Road casualties tell us something about the living You might think a field guide to identifying ‘roadkill’ was unnecessarily macabre, but as Roger Knutson explains in his 1987 book, Flattened Fauna, ‘in becoming part of the road fauna … an animal loses not only its life but also … most of its mass and much …

“The recent freeze to these capital grants has undermined the financial security landowners vitally depended on. It’s a huge step backwards that will damage our chances of preventing further loss of this vital countryside network and the ambition to extend and improve it.” Hedgerows need our help We’ve had hedgerows for almost as long as …

Bridging the knowledge gap Hazel dormice have long been the focus of conservation efforts in Britain. In the 1990s Pat Morris and Paul Bright studied them, laying the foundation for the understanding of their ecology and behaviour. Over the years, the scope of research has expanded, not just through academic studies, but also through the …