After 45 years, harvest mice have been reintroduced to Perivale Wood Local Nature Reserve.

More than 150 harvest mice were reintroduced over the last week as part of the Bringing Harvest Mice Back to Ealing project, by Rewild London Fund in partnership with London Wildlife Trust.

Members of the Selborne Society, who own the open reserve, joined with other project partners Ealing Wildlife Group to release the harvest mice back into the wild, where they were last spotted in 1979, before becoming locally extinct. This makes Perivale Wood the fifth site in Ealing where the Ealing Wildlife Group have released harvest mice as part of their rewilding project. The total number of harvest mice now released across the borough is around 1650.

The reserve, which includes ancient oak woodland and neutral grassland, has supported a great diversity of animal and plant life. The reintroduction, supported with funding from Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund and the Mayor of London, aims to help the climate crisis and create an improved ecosystem for plant and animal life.

At Perivale Wood, parts of the meadows have been set aside to create wildlife corridors for harvest mice, as well as other small mammals. The grass here is set to provide nesting material and cover for harvest mice. A new pond has also been dug alongside an existing pond, which will develop over time to create a reed bed area, a habitat which harvest mice and many other species favour.

In total, the Mayor of London has invested over £2.4 million into rewilding London, including £750,000 from Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund. The fund will eventually have helped to create or restore over 350 hectares of wildlife habitat across the capital.

David Mooney, CEO at London Wildlife Trust said: “London Wildlife Trust is proud to support this excellent project to reintroduce the iconic harvest mice into Perivale Wood, Ealing. The wildlife corridors created through habitat improvements will crucially link new and existing populations, helping to bolster the species’ resilience in the Borough.”

Richard Goddard, chair of Selborne Society commented: “I’m excited to see the improvements we’ve made to small mammal habitats at Perivale Wood, including the creation of a new pond; this will soon provide reed beds, a habitat favoured by harvest mice and many other species. We are hugely grateful to all the Selborne Society volunteers who put in more than 2,000 hours of voluntary work in 2023 to improve our habitats, to Ealing Wildlife Group for bringing us into this rewilding initiative and the volunteers at Horsenden Farm for their incredible hard work breeding the mice in captivity in preparation for their release. This has been the perfect way to celebrate National Mammal Week and Forgotten Mammals.”

Dr Sean McCormack, vet and chair of Ealing Wildlife Group added: “It’s been really fantastic to see wilder habitat types emerge in the past few years through our collaborative work with Ealing Council, meaning species that have previously been pushed to the edge now have the opportunity to return. Our Rewilding Ealing initiative has seen not only Britain’s smallest native rodent, the Harvest Mouse reintroduced, but also our largest, the Eurasian Beaver.”

Zak Watts, Amazon’s international sustainability director said: “Bringing nature back to the communities where we live and work is a core purpose of Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund. Thank you to all the experts and volunteers who have been working hard over the winter to rewild Perivale Wood and prepare for the harvest mice introduction. Local projects like these are key to improving our capital’s biodiversity challenge and helping Londoners enjoy and connect with nature.”