Our Story
One girl and one mouse
Wild Pets began back in 2022, when 10 year old Eva went on a family camping trip to Derek Gow’s Species Recovery Centre, heard about his team re-introducing “missing species” like beavers, water voles and harvest mice and was inspired to start breeding harvest mice at home. Once she’d talked her parents into letting her do it, she started with two breeding pairs, kept in a big tank divided in two. Unfortunately, next door’s cat got into the tank and ate 3 of the 4, but luckily the survivor was pregnant and, after Eva moved her into her bedroom, away from the cat, she gave birth to 5 pups. Derek gave Eva another male and her project was back on track.
Eva's mice go off to Cheshire
In the first year, she bred 68 mice which were given to Derek Gow’s team and released along with others at a rewilding site in Cheshire.
In a later interview, Eva said “I like to to think of my mice living in Cheshire with northern accents”.
Earthshot Junior competition - an idea is born
One day, Eva took a tank of her mice into school to do a talk about her project. “I’d never been so popular”, she said, as all her classmates really wanted to see the mice and learn more about them . It was on the bus home that day, that Eva thought: How can we get more children involved in breeding endangered native wildlife?
And that’s how WILD PETS was born.
Eva’s Mum told her that Blue Peter and Prince William were running a Junior version of his famous EarthShot prize and so Eva entered her Wild Pets idea into the competition in early 2025 and ended up being a runner-up and winning a highly prized orange Blue Peter badge.
2 is better than 1
Eva then met Emily at high school and the two girls joined forces. Emily initially moved a tank of mice into her bedroom and then, when they started multiplying, had to clear her garage to make more room. Emily’s mum regularly visited the local tip, looking for old fish tanks people had discarded, which a friendly carpenter would then convert for mice by making a new mesh lid.
Eva and Emily spent the next year breeding as many mice as possible - they had 27 tanks with 11 breeding pairs at their peak - and so, in September 2025 they were ready for their release.
Preparing the ground
Eva and Emily decided to ask Derek whether a new community nature reserve that was being created near where they lived might be a suitable site for a harvest mouse release. Derek’s team surveyed the site, found there weren’t any harvest mice there - but there should be - and agreed it would be a suitable location once more trees were planted, a pond dug, dead hedges created etc. Many volunteers helped carry out this work.
The Packham Effect
They decided to write to Chris Packham (Emily’s all-time hero) to ask whether he might like to come to their release and he said yes! The only date he could do, Eva was on a family holiday in France so her family had to cut short their holiday - it was worth it though!
Chris Packham coming to the release meant that lots of press also came along and soon Eva and Emily were speaking live on the radio and attending TV interviews.
Harvest Mouse Success
As part of the release process, Eva and Emily conducted harvest mouse nest surveys. They knew that if they found nests at their release site, then their mice had survived and bred the next generation. (Surveys need to take place outside of breeding season to avoid disturbing any mice that may be around the nest site) On their very first survey both Emily and Eva were ecstatic, they found 5 nests, meaning at least 5 litters of baby mice had been born in the wild.
SPRINGWATCH
Eva and Emily got back in touch with Chris to let him know that the release had been successful and before they knew it, the WILD PETS story featured on Spring Watch (Emily’s all time favourite programme).
After Wild Pets appeared on Spring Watch, things started to happen. Derek and Chris were contacted by people that were interested in getting involved, offering funding to support the project and helping it to become a reality.
Both Eva and Emily were really happy when they found out that there were people out there just like them, wanting to help nature and improve the environment. Its not just about the mice, its about building a community of like minded young people and their families.
WILD PETS is Go
The team got to work and following months of planning and consulting with the experts WILD PETS was ready to launch to the public. The project is centred around the passion of young people who want to make a difference and encourage others to do the same. Eva appeared live on Radio Devon on launch day (and then still had to go to school). The story was released in the Guardian newspaper and appeared on BBC Spotlight inviting children from across Devon to apply to become a WILD KID.