AN effort by schoolchildren to save the harvest mouse - almost lost to the region - is to feature on television.

The pupils of Harrowgate Hill School, Darlington, are running a breeding programme and will appear on Tyne Tees Television's Wild North programme, on Sunday, at 5.35pm.

They are helping Ian Bond, countryside warden for Stockton Borough Council, who obtained mice for breeding, but ran out of space to keep them.

The first two, Poppy and Barley, have produced litters.

"Next summer, they will be ready to go back to the wild," said science teacher Graham Temby.

The programme also features children helping to preserve water voles at Greatham Beck, near Hartlepool, and looks at the problems caused by thousands of Brent geese arriving on Lindisfarne, Northumberland, each year.

science teacher at Harrowgate Hill to see if they could help and the pupils were only too delighted.