Herramienta Computacional LAHARZ para Zonificar Exposición

Most people who visit the reserve, including my informants, are more likely to find a hazelnut shell showing dormice teeth marks or come across an empty nest than they are to catch sight of a dormouse. The wider population will never encounter a living dormouse. For most of my informants, other than the dormouse monitors, it is a rare event and even the monitors find that, despite the amount of time they spend monitoring, encountering a dormouse is a rare experience. Rarely encountered, dormice have a ‘mystique’ that fascinates staff,

volunteers and visitors alike and have a considerable impact on the way the reserve is managed. The well-being of the dormouse population is a major justification for continued management of the woodland through the practice of coppicing. The dormice of the reserve have been protected since 1988 by the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) and are listed for protection by both the European Habitats Directive (1992) in Annex IV (a), and Appendix 3 of the Bern Convention (1979). This protection has a substantial impact on how the Trust, my informants and the dormouse monitors act toward the reserve’s dormice even when their presence is only suspected.

The ecology of dormice limits human–dormouse encounters. The dormouse population of the reserve, although not fully numerated, is thought to be small. Dormice are predominantly nocturnal, rarely move around or feed in the woodland space that humans occupy and when encountered they are fast moving and agile. In the media dormice are portrayed through physical or behavioural characteristics that humans find attractive; they have relatively large round eyes, a body covered with soft sandy fur and have the habit of sleeping and hibernating in a foetal ball. These characteristics make it easy for the media to anthropomorphise them and, although this is a practice shunned by professional ecologists, it often surfaces when the staff and volunteers encounter animals.

During my fieldwork I observed dormice being encountered by my informants, only twice, once with Jill and Jack when observing them monitoring, and then by accident when coppicing with the Thursday volunteers. For any of my informants, an encounter with a living dormouse is a noteworthy event. Even for those who have the opportunity of encountering dormice through monitoring, encounters with dormice are considered to be a privileged event. While Dot monitored dormice, which involved her spending several days a month checking dormouse boxes, she only rarely encountered an actual dormouse. Dot highlights the rarity of encounters with dormice when she explained in an interview, ‘We only saw two or three last year’.

collection and analysis of site-specific data relating to them and their activities. In addition, academic ecologists and professional wildlife conservationists will add to their interpretations by adding layers of methodologies and statistical analysis. Conceptually and practically the monitors are seen as objective observers independent of the objects or events under observation (see Latour, 2007). The monitors in my study were rarely reflexive about their involvement in the act of monitoring dormice but were, on occasion, reflexive about how their involvement in monitoring changed their relationship with the reserve’s woodland and wildlife. In the following section I explore how dormouse monitoring is experienced by individuals and how the different ways they experience monitoring can be understood in terms of life trajectory, habitus (Bourdieu, 1977) and dwelling (Ingold, 1993).

Jill and Jack have monitored the dormice of Horwood for ten years, and Dot the dormice of Valley Wood for over twenty years. During my fieldwork I spent time with Dot, Jill and Jack as they went about their monitoring activities, and when dormice were a general topic of conversation. Dormice were also a topic that arose in my interviews with the volunteer monitors, and on the many other occasions that I met and chatted with them. I spent over three hours of interview time with these informants, as they were a rich source of data that related, not only to dormice, but also to the wildlife and woodland of the reserve.

Because of their dormice monitoring activities, Dot, Jill and Jack are recognised by most of my informants as being part of a local ‘dormouse network’ that operates within the bounds of the Trust’s reserves. They are also a part of a wider national and international network and are guided by the practices of that network. This network can be seen as part of a Bourdieuian 'field' that governs the criteria that control human encounters with dormice. The rules for engaging in the monitoring of dormice are created by a national and European network composed of national and European recognised dormouse ‘experts’, Natural England, and other European government and non-government policymaking and regulating organisations. All the encounters with dormice I observed or experienced appeared to be dominated by criteria that emanate from this network of individual experts and organisations. Even the accidental encounters

of the coppicers with dormice in a remote part of the reserve (far from observation by outside bodies) was dominated by a 'fear' of transgressing the criteria set for encounters with dormice. I illustrate this in more detail later.