Four tiny refugees from the Newbury bypass will soon awake from their long hibernation. These dormice had been living in woods on the line of the fiercely resisted new road but they were trapped last year and kept captive for their own safety.

Once the dormice emerge from half a year of slumber they will either be kept in captivity to breed or be released into the wild, returning the species to one of the many woodlands from which it has vanished this century.

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