Wanted: children to rear harvest mice at home for wild release in Devon

Teenagers Eva Wishart and Emily Smith have launched a project inviting children in Devon to become "citizen captive breeders" by rearing harvest mice at home for release into the wild. The initiative aims to help revive endangered nature by breeding and releasing 250 of these tiny animals by September.

Wild Pets, a new conservation project, is seeking 20 Devon-based children to rear hundreds of harvest mice. This initiative follows the duo's successful restoration efforts, where they bred several hundred harvest mice in tanks in their garages and released them into a nature reserve in Devon, south-west England. The mice have begun breeding in the wild again, marking a significant step in conservation efforts.

The harvest mouse, the UK’s smallest native rodent, is notable for its prehensile tail, which allows it to grasp and hold objects. This unique adaptation helps the mouse navigate grass stems, which have become increasingly scarce due to agricultural intensification.

Eva founded Wild Pets after feeling sympathy for traditional pets confined to cages and worrying about the extinction crisis. She began breeding harvest mice at the age of 10. "I took them to school once to do a talk when I was 10," she recalled. "It was the most popular I’ve ever been and everyone voted that we should keep them. So then we kept them in school in a big tank in the corner for six weeks. It was great. They had loads of babies."