Dormouse counts in England and Wales rose in a five-year window

Hazel dormouse numbers in England and Wales may have turned up between 2020 and 2025, after a long fall. The BBC reported on November 9, 2026, that the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme, run by the People's Trust for Endangered Species since 1998, found an increase of almost 10 percent in that five-year window. The same record shows a drop of almost 60 percent since 2000, about 3.5 percent a year. Researchers stressed that the recent gain has a wide band of uncertainty.

The upturn lines up with warmer, drier springs and summers. Dormice hibernate from about October to May and can also drop into torpor on cold, wet days in the warmer months, when food is scarce. The team thinks less torpor left more time to feed and to raise extra litters. Co-author Ian White called it cautious good news and said populations remain far below the year 2000. Ecologist Charlotte Armitage said warmer, wetter winters are still an open question, and that habitat work cannot stop. Native dormice are now mostly in southern England and parts of Wales, and they are gone from about 20 English counties as woods and hedgerows have been lost. The news is this uncertain five-year rise. It is not a recovery.