![]() “This is a historic moment for the Pacific pocket mouse-establishing a fourth population, in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park-and it is so exciting,” Debra said. Then in June 2016, a major milestone was reached-50 Pacific pocket mice were released into the protected area. It’s a process! Clockwise from left: The mice start out in acclimation cages to get used to the area Debra Shier sets up remote-viewing cameras to keep an eye on the mice upon final release, the cage is lifted up and removed traps are placed to survey the site for other small rodents. Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and it comes exactly four years after the mice were brought into zoo care for the conservation breeding program at the Safari Park. Once permits and approvals were issued for the reintroduction, it was time to get the area “move-in ready” for the mice-and to get the mice ready to move! This is the first reintroduction for the Pacific pocket mouse recovery program, which we are managing in cooperation with the U.S. Once the mice did what comes naturally and reproduced, the next step was to take some of the rescued rodents back to their native habitat. So far, successful breeding has almost quadrupled the number of mice at the facility. Here, our Applied Animal Ecology and Reproductive Physiology and Genetics researchers are studying pocket mouse behavior, ecology, stress, and genetic variation to ensure that we successfully produce the most fit offspring for release, and learn as much as we can about them along the way. But for the Pacific pocket mouse, it got to a point we couldn’t recover the species by keeping them in the wild,” Debra said. “It’s a huge responsibility to pull animals out of the wild and into zoo care we prefer to keep them in the wild. Instead, the Pocket Mouse Conservation Breeding Facility was established at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2012. Given the small number of Pacific pocket mice remaining in the wild, a translocation program to populate areas of former habitat was originally deemed too risky. She added that the mice dig burrows, which aerate the soil and increase nutrient cycling, encouraging growth of native plants. “They are eaters and dispersers of native seeds, movers of soil, and prey for other animals,” she said. But as Brown Endowed Associate Director of Applied Animal Ecology Debra Shier, Ph.D., noted, Pacific pocket mice play an important role in their habitat. And as rodents, some might consider them pests. Given their diminutive size-only 5 inches long from nose to tail tip, and weighing less than a quarter-the importance of these mice could be overlooked. ![]() “Pocket” refers not to the animal’s pocket-sized stature, but rather to its fur-lined, external cheek pouches, which are used to temporarily store seeds while foraging. One of 19 subspecies of pocket mice, the Pacific pocket mouse Perognathus longimembris pacificus was federally listed as endangered in 1994. If the species was going to survive, it was going to need a boost in its numbers-and the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research stepped in to help. Further research revealed that four small Pacific pocket mouse populations remained: one on Dana Point and three in military training areas on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. They were thought to have gone extinct, until a tiny remnant population was rediscovered in 1993 in Dana Point, California. Once found from Los Angeles all the way to the Mexican border at the southern edge of San Diego County, the Pacific pocket mouse found its habitat being taken over by humans, until the rodents seemingly disappeared. No one is more aware of the high demand for California real estate than the Pacific pocket mouse. ![]()
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