SIR — I read with interest the report in last week’s Free Press regarding the £4,000 raised for dormouse boxes within Exmoor National Park.

I wonder if the advocates of and enthusiasts for monitoring dormouse populations by dormouse boxes ever consider whether their actions are themselves contributing towards the decline of those dormouse populations.

For a number of years I assisted my wife and the late Cecil Owen in monitoring dormouse boxes within the park at a number of locations.

I gradually came to realise that opening and inspecting these boxes on a monthly basis throughout the summer was in fact a cause of serious disturbance to the dormice themselves.

When we were well into our 70s and finding that clambering through the undergrowth was becoming more difficult, we were able to transfer our energies to establishing a breeding unit, breeding dormice for transfer to Paignton Zoo and subsequent release into the wild.

The conclusions that I reached whilst I was monitoring dormouse in the wild were confirmed by the distress displayed by our captive dormouse in the breeding unit, this despite the dormouse having been bred in captivity and being habituated to the regular presence of humans and the necessary activities in feeding and caring for them.

Dormice are “K-selective” and are therefore not prolific breeders. They require a fairly restricted environment in which to thrive and their population will always be comparatively small.

Before the 1950s they were indeed fairly common in an environment which was dominated by hazel coppice woodland, managed on a regular basis and where the produce was sold in the marketplace for such things as pea sticks and bean rods, thatching spars and the like.

Since the 1950s the British population has become more urbanised, affluent and idle and has “sold its soul” to the supermarkets who were willing to provide vegetables cheaply and without the physical effort of people actually having to cultivate their gardens to grow them themselves.

Gardens had become sterile deserts awash with pesticides, insecticides and herbicides, or else smothered in concrete and asphalt.

Thus it was that the traditional coppice woodland management went into rapid decline and many acres were converted to conifer plantations.

Coppice areas that remained became more and more neglected, the habitat deteriorated and became less attractive, so the dormouse population declined.

The countryside, instead of being viewed as a working environment, became a playground for the urbanised populations, which in turn became divorced from its reality. There was increased disturbance, particularly by humans, so, inevitably, the dormouse population declined further.

It will continue to do so until serious efforts are made to regenerate coppice woodland, not in penny packets but in logically planned and managed “cants” as in the past. Monitoring is not going to have any effect on this decline whatsoever.

I suggest that the money raised by this appeal would be far better spent in training employees and volunteers in proper, traditional, working techniques for the management of hazel coppice rather than in buying and installing more monitoring boxes.

If the park authority really considers that it must have dormouse boxes, these are easily constructed on a DIY basis by any moderately competent handyman; they can be bulk produced as flat-pack and then passed to volunteers, or indeed schoolchildren, to assemble.

This would not only be a practical activity for volunteers but was also make sure that the monies raised went a lot further for the benefit of dormice.

P J D Donnelly,

By email.