With increasing numbers of feral predators, disappearing habitat and changed fire regimes many of our tiniest bush animals, Australian native rodents, are now endangered. Fortunately, under the sponsorship of the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife, Fred Ford and Linda Broome, Project Managers for the “Active Recovery Program for South-eastern Australian rodents”, are creating innovative ideas to save our native mice from extinction.

Through field research, captive colonies and some clever ideas such as a lickometer, Fred and Linda hope to create a large enough knowledge base to successfully re-introduce native rodents back into the wild. Meanwhile, an educational program will make stars out of the tiny bush creatures.

In New South Wales, New Holland Mice, Hastings River Mice and Eastern Chestnut Mice are found mainly north of Sydney. Smoky Mice occur in southern NSW and Victoria, Broad-Toothed Rats occur mainly at high elevations in alpine and sub-alpine areas of the Snowy Mountains and Barrington Tops, and Long-tailed mice are restricted to Tasmania.

Yet the bones of these species are commonly found together in fossilised owl deposits, suggesting that they once inhabited much larger areas of habitat.

“We’re unsure what is causing the declining numbers but we feel it has to do with loss of habitat and food resources,” Fred and Linda explain. Some native mice, like the New Holland and Smoky Mice, prefer to live in heath, and although the team is still uncertain as to why, we hypothesise that it may be because it offers them protection from predators and has the richest source of their natural diet.

“We think communal nesting may have a strong influence on the survival of species such as Smoky mice. Ordinarily Smoky mice are communal nesters with up to three or four females in the nest. Recently, because of the decline in numbers, there are only one or two females per nest which may increase their stress levels and reduce their survival rate,” Linda explains. “The other side to this story is that communal nests are easy targets for feral cats that are able to sit outside a nest entrance and eat a colony of mice in a night.”

Moving food sources will also reveal much needed information. As Fred explains, Silky mice love to eat flowering banksia heads so the team will cut off the heads of the banksia plants and move them to a different location to see if the mice follow.

The rodents’ favourite foods will also be on the menu for a special fundraising dinner. To increase awareness on the plight of Australian native mice, Fred and Linda will serve their guests dishes based on the rodents’ natural food sources, including wattle seed bread and lilly-pilly jam.

Fred and Linda will also set up a photographic film system to capture images of their captive rodents’ eating behaviour. They hope to broadcast this over webcam, allowing sponsors access to the footage accompanied by email alerts to notify sponsors when the mice are feeding. This means the stars on many people’s monitors may soon be our tiny bush critters.