Heart warming story to end the day
Harvest Mice have been returned to Perivale Wood, West London for the first time in 45 years - London Wildlife Trust
Last weekend, members of the Selborne Society, who own Perivale Wood, joined project partners Ealing Wildlife Group to release over 150 harvest mice into the wild at Perivale Wood in Ealing – becoming the fifth site in Ealing where harvest mice have been released as part of the Ealing Wildlife Group rewilding project.
'Bringing Harvest Mice Back to Ealing' is a Rewild London Fund project that London Wildlife Trust is thrilled to be involved in. It has been made possible with funding from the Mayor of London and Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund.
Perivale Wood is the UK’s second oldest nature reserve, and the last place harvest mice were sighted in Ealing before becoming locally extinct. It has been managed by the Selborne Society since 1902 and is a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) and statutory Local Nature Reserve. The Wood includes ancient oak woodland and neutral grassland, supporting a great diversity of animal and plant life.
Harvest mice became locally extinct in Ealing over four decades ago, with the last recorded sighting at Perivale Wood in 1979. Habitat loss and fragmentation are likely to be the main cause of their loss from the borough. Habitat loss is estimated to have resulted in the British harvest mouse population declining by 70% since the 1970s.
More than 1650 harvest mice have now been released across sites in Ealing with Perivale Wood becoming the fifth release site. This project links up those release sites with new and improved suitable habitats at Perivale Wood via dispersal routes along the canal and railside, enabling the harvest mouse population to expand its range and thus making the population more likely to expand and survive any habitat stress caused by events such as a drought.
Posted On: 30/04/2024
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