Eva and Emily are helping nature to recover one tiny step at a time

At the age when most teenagers are worrying about homework or what's trending on TikTok, two 13-year-olds from Mid Devon are quietly leading a conservation revolution from their Tiverton homes.

- by LEWIS CLARKE

Eva Wishart and Emily Smith are working to breed and release 250 endangered harvest mice into the countryside by September.

Harvest mice are the UK’s smallest rodent, weighing less than a 2p coin and rarely growing longer than a school ruler.

But tiny as they are, these mice carry big ecological weight, and thanks to Eva and Emily they're making a comeback.

It all began with a family trip. Eva recalled: “We went camping at Derek Gow's rewilding place on Dartmoor and heard all about how he is breeding Britain’s ‘missing species’ - beavers, storks, water voles and harvest mice.

“These are all native species that should be living freely, but aren’t, mostly because of us humans”

The trip planted a seed. With no licence required for breeding harvest mice, Eva and Emily got a few tanks from a friend, and with two breeding pairs from Gow himself, they set to work.

They're now on course to release 250 mice - 100 more than their original target - into a specially prepared site in Lower Washfield this September. The girls’ homes, meanwhile, have become bustling miniature mouse habitats.