����ý

These creatures are extremely rare, so you've probably never seen one of them before.

Now efforts to bring pine martens back to the Forest of Dean in England, have just reached a major milestone - with a number of females having recently had babies.

Extensive hunting and loss of their woodland habitat over the last 200 years had resulted in near extinction of the pine marten in England.

But in September last year, conservation teams brought 18 pine martens from Scotland to settle them in the Forest of Dean in Gloucester.

The project led by Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and Forestry England is the first formal reintroduction of pine martens to England and aims to boost the recovery of pine martens in this country.

Thanks to around the clock radio tracking and trail camera monitoring, the team now know that at least three of the females gave birth this spring.

Pine martens mate in the summer months but then delay their pregnancy until spring when conditions are right.

They do not necessarily breed every year, which is one of the contributing factors to their slow recovery from Scotland back into England and Wales.

With numbers gradually falling, they became Britain's second rarest native carnivore, only left in the North-West Highlands of Scotland.

Since then the population has begun to recover well in Scotland, but has not yet made such a comeback in England.

Dr Cat McNicol, Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust's Conservation Projects Manager says the fact that they had given birth showed that the conditions in the forest were as good as they had hoped for.

He said: "There seems to have been plenty of food available for them through winter and there are lots of great denning sites for the females to give birth and raise kits in, such as old beech trees full of hollows and mature conifers with cracks and cavities out of reach."

Most pine martens give birth to two or three babies, called kits.

At about six weeks old the kits have their eyes open and start being weaned off milk on to solid food.

Rebecca Wilson, Planning and Environment Manager for Forestry England says:

"The hope is that over the next two years, more pine martens will be released into the Forest and that a population will establish there."

Conservationists hope that this population will then spread and link up with recently reintroduced Welsh pine martens, ensuring the their survival.