Dormice Matter

A Dormice Sanctuary?

The logo of Foal Hurst Wood nature reserve features a Hazel Dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius), for it is one of the ‘special’ residents in the reserve. All life is precious and perhaps it is wrong of me to rank animals, plants, fungi into some sort of hierarchical system.  I use the term ‘special’ for the dormice because there are few of them and they are just about hanging on as residents of the wood. A survey in 2011 by professional ecologists confirmed that dormice were also to be found in Brick Kiln wood. This is not surprising, for I have long known that the thin line of trees between the two woods is and remains vital to the long term survival of the population of dormice in Foal Hurst Wood, maybe even in both woods.

Looking at a map of both woodlands I personally think that the warmer southern slopes of Brick Kiln offers the possibility of being a dormice strong hold, but I would need to visit this private woodland and survey the area to really know.

Hazel dormice are ‘special’ in the planning process because of their rarity and vulnerability to local and national extinction, which ensures that they currently receive international legal protection across the whole of Europe. It is illegal to kill, maim, injure or sell hazel dormice, as well as destroy where they rest or breed.  Training & a licence is required to survey and monitor the dormice population in Foal Hurst Wood and I personally feel I am privileged to be able to handle and view these endearing animals at such close quarters.

Future planning applications, in regard to development at Mascalls Farm, will require a mitigation plan showing not only how the dormice population will be protected from local extinction, but also how the area can be enhanced to ensure they have every possibility of remaining and increasing their numbers in the two woods and so remain in ‘Favourable Conservation Status’ as the jargon goes.

Can dormice be found elsewhere in the town?

Hazel dormice differ from other small mammals, like say wood mice, or field voles, in that they naturally occur in relatively low numbers and low density in wooded habitats, often only 3-5 adults per hectare in ‘good’ dormice habitat. Scientific studies in the 1990’s indicted that there needs to be a wooded area of a minimum of 20 hectares (30 acres) of suitable habitat, if their long term survival in a woodland, as a viable population, is to continue. They do also occur in hedgerows, but this is probably due to the removal , over thousands of years, of much of the woodland habitat across the UK and Europe; in many places leaving only hedgerows as their last refuge. Hedgerows also act as vital highways for dormice to move around the countryside, for they are reluctant to come to the ground, except if there is no other choice and at hibernation time.

Question  : Where in the town are there areas of woodland, or connected woodlands, totaling 20 hectares or more? Answer : nowhere other than Brick Kiln Wood (8 hectares) & Foal Hurst Wood (12 hectares). Indeed you will notice it needs both Brick Kiln Wood and Foal Hurst Wood to make up that magical total of 20 hectares !

What about Church Farm ?

I mentioned in my post of 15^th January, that I was aware that ecologists had set up dormice tubes last summer, to see if any of the furry dormice were living on the proposed development site. We will have to see if any are found, but unless they are living along the railway hedges, which could be a possibility, I would be surprised if they will be found here, for there is no suitable woodland nearby and the site has large areas of open farmland. But, you just never know.

..and the Mascalls Court Farm site ?

Well, small woodlands are adjacent to the site, but not large enough to support a sustainable population, according to current knowledge regarding suitable dormice habitat. Again, time will tell if this is the case.

Are dormice to be found nearby?

I am aware of dormice in the parishes of both Brenchley and Matfield . The latter is interesting for Cinderhill Wood in Matfield is the closest woodland to the southern edge of Brick Kiln Wood. Were these woods ever joined together in say the last 100 years ? if so, then maybe hazel dormice inhabited this larger woodland before it was split up? But of course we just don’t know, because few people studied, or wrote, about such matters many years ago. For it was never expected that animals and plants would vanish from the landscape within a generation.

The future

Ok now the tricky bit, what will happen to the dormice in Foal Hurst & Brick Kiln woods, over the next 25 years ?

Nationally and also within Kent, hazel dormice numbers continue to fall, despite all the survey work and habitat management which takes place. I monitor two other woodland sites in Kent and also communicate with a network of dormice surveyors within the county. Some woodlands in the county are doing fine and others have plummeted from being some of the best sites for seeing dormice, to becoming dormice ’ Bermuda triangles’ , where animals are no longer found.

Hazel dormice found in a monitoring box.

Dormice populations are monitored by putting up boxes, similar in shape and size to bird nest boxes and monitored monthly from April – October. One of my sites (near Tonbridge) was for many years a woodland where the number of dormice encountered was low. I then moved twenty of the boxes 50 -75 metres, either side of the existing monitoring area and bingo, suddenly I found lots of them and the site became a good reliable site for finding dormice. This lasted for around three years or so and then the numbers dropped right off. Why, I could not say. Maybe dormice are naturally ‘wild rovers’, never staying in one area for more than a few years?

The problem with Foal Hurst & Brick Kiln wood is that there is nowhere else for the dormice to go and crucially no way for them to recolonise from anywhere nearby. So if conditions become unsuitable and the dormice become locally extinct then, to paraphrase one of the national supermarket’s advertising jargons, “ when they gone, they are gone!”  And this is what I fear for the town’s dormice population, for my monitoring in Foal Hurst Wood shows that they are only just surviving  in the nature reserve, despite all our best efforts over the last ten years to keep the habitat suitable. 

A crucial blow came in October 2010, when contractors working for a national power network company, severed the wooded link between Brick Kiln & Foal Hurst Wood, by shredding all the trees !

These pictures show what happens to trees (& a dormouse box) 

when an industrial shredder clears the site of  all vegetation.

Since then numbers of dormice I have found, when monitoring Foal Hurst Wood, have been on the decline. It just shows how the wrong management of habitat in a tiny, but vital, area can have a drastic effect on wildlife populations.

The last dormice ?

Underground he stirs, as the air above slowly warms. Snug in his nest of tightly woven honeysuckle bark and moss, Solo, a hazel dormice, twitches. His body detects that spring has arrived. It’s time to wake from his five month long slumber. Hunger provides a primeval kick-start, to bringing Solo out of his deep sleep. It takes another 20 minutes for his body to warm sufficiently to start moving his stiff limbs and to venture outside, into the dark night.

Sniffing the breeze and driven by the urge to feed, Solo steady climbs a nearby tree and explores the thin branches, searching the leaves and flower buds for something to nibble. A few aphids and a little nectar provide a welcome boost of energy. A new season of activity has started for Solo, the last of his kind living in the wood. The previous summer he searched in vain for another dormouse, a female to start a family with and bring a new generation of tiny youngsters into his world of trees, bushes & brambles. But luck was not on his side and although he doesn’t know it, time is running out for him. This will be his last summer on Earth; the last autumn for a dormouse to hunt for hazel nuts in the wood. Over the last decade the world has moved on and new forces are in the ascendancy. The wood is home to many new creatures, who without knowing it, have made this once ideal dormice world into a shrinking island, for which there is no escape.

“I am sorry Solo, I fought for so many years to keep your home safe for you and your fellow kind. I failed to convince many of my own kind that your life was worth saving. I, we, everyone, has failed you, for we lacked the will & determination to ensure that an undisturbed area, for you to call home, remained as part of the town’s landscape”.

Is this how it is supposed to end ?