A dormouse living in the Skaigh valley at Belstone was one of the stars of Hugh’s Wild West (shown on BBC2 on 20 January) which saw presenter Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall join local expert Leo Gubert to track down the tiny rodent. Locals Robin Hill and Peter Radlett began setting up and monitoring dormouse boxes in the valley in 2009 and there are now over 50 in place. Using modern techniques (fixing miniature radio-tracking collars and using motion-activated trail cameras) Leo has begun to challenge the ‘sleep-all-winter’ conventional thinking about hibernation by proving that Skaigh dormice have woken several times during the winter, even making aerial crossings of the River Taw to reach new foraging areas.
You can watch the program on BBC iPlayer until the middle of February.
