Fourteen-year-olds Eva Wishart and Emily Smith launched Wild Pets to recruit 20 Devon children aged eight to 13 to rear harvest mice at home and release them into the wild. Wild Pets will supply each child with a pair of harvest mice and equipment after a training day next spring at Derek Gow’s Rewilding Coombeshead centre. The project aims to breed and release 250 harvest mice by next September; Eva and Emily previously bred and released hundreds of mice on a Devon nature reserve where maternal nests were found this year. The harvest mouse is the UK’s smallest native rodent and the only British mammal with a prehensile tail, a trait it uses to clamber among grass stems lost to agricultural intensification. Wild Pets is advised by ecologist and rewilding practitioner Derek Gow and backed by the Devon Environment Foundation, Mid Devon district council and the Naturesave Trust. Wild Pets was a runner-up in Prince William’s junior Earthshot competition in 2025 and drew praise from Chris Packham on BBC’s Springwatch.
