Week Six – Dormice

This week, Bill and the team must scale the heights of ingenuity to reunite separated populations of dormice. The dormouse, arguably Britain's cutest mouse, is suffering from habitat fragmentation over the UK. The mice inhabit woodland, living high in the trees and foraging for nuts and berries at night.

When building developments split their woodlands, dormice populations remain forever cast asunder as the mice will only move through woodland canopy and never travel at ground level. Split dormice populations could be too small to healthily sustain themselves, leading to genetic inbreeding and disease.

At a dormice site in Cheddar, Somerset, Bill and the team face their most challenging problem so far – to reunite a split population of dormice by spanning a 25-metre gap in the woodland canopy. Replanting trees is not an option and the team soon realize that they must build a dormice bridge.

While Bill, Dusty and Sasha go about investigating the travel habits of dormice, Jem is faced with having to build a mesh bridge that will tempt these cautious and alert little creatures across the great divide.

The design must also be simple and sturdy enough so that the Highways Agency will build similar bridges at future development sites. As usual the Wild Thing team turn up trumps.

See the story in pictures in the gallery.