
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, October 9, 1993                   TAG: 9310090037
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KARIN DAVIES ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Short

DOZY DORMOUSE ENDANGERED; NEATLY NIBBLED NUTS HUNTED

Once upon a time the dozy dormouse thrived in the forests of Britain, gorging on hazelnuts each autumn before settling down for a long winter's nap.

But hazel thickets where the dormouse made its home began to disappear. So did the neatly nibbled hazelnuts that are a telltale sign the creature is about.

Worry about the survival of the tiny creature, best known from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," has led the government to ask people across the land to look for nibbled nuts.

"Dormice are small and rarely seen, so we don't know very much about their distribution or abundance," said Tony Mitchell-Jones, spokesman for the government conservation agency English Nature.

The week starting Oct. 27 has been designated National Dormouse Week. But the "Great Nut Hunt" has already begun.

Hundreds of volunteers are walking through forests in England and Wales, carrying little paper fans with diagrams showing the difference between a nut chewed by a dormouse and one gnawed by a wood mouse, bank vole or squirrel.

Where dormice are found, Mitchell-Jones said landowners will be encouraged to plant fruit- and nut-bearing shrubs and install small nesting boxes on trees.

by CNB