Garden dormouse in focus: Let's defend our endangered species!

Garden dormouse in focus: Let's defend our endangered species!

March 3, 2025 is dedicated to World Endangered Species Day, and in Germany too, special attention is paid to the garden dormouse. This endangered small lemur with its characteristic Zorro mask is only at home in Europe and is suffering from a drastic decline in its habitat. The German Association for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) and the bird experts at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen (JLU) have collected valuable data in their joint project “Searching for Traces of Garden Dormouse” in order to secure the population of the species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has classified the garden dormouse as “endangered” since 2024, after it was previously on the warning list. This classification was necessary because the actual distribution of the garden dormouse had hardly been researched for years oekonews.at reported.

Over the last 50 years, the garden dormouse's range has decreased dramatically - by about a third! This is a warning sign that requires further action. The “Search for Traces of Garden Dormouse” project, which runs from 2018 to the end of 2024, has examined the causes of this decline and developed a comprehensive protection concept. Genetic analyzes and the documentation of habitats and dietary habits are incorporated into a national genetic database. In addition, volunteer “garden dormouse rescuers” are mobilized to support the species in monitoring, which promotes citizen science, as the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) has explained.

Collection of stocks and protective measures

The project initiators have set up an online reporting center through which thousands of records of the garden dormouse have been documented. This resulted in a current distribution map for Germany. The information collected is crucial for developing and implementing concrete measures to conserve the population in the species' different habitats. The data collected not only shows the decline, but also the ecological differences between the occurrences in the lowlands and in the low mountain ranges, which in turn underlines the urgency of the project bfn.de explained.