The National Gamebag Census (NGC) contains records from 20 mammal species, ranging from game animals to their predators. As a member of the Tracking Mammals Partnership, and with support from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has carried out a detailed analysis of the bag data. The resulting trends are a good indication of population trends (see interpretational considerations), and are consistent with the results from the mammal component of the Breeding Bird Survey organised by the British Trust for Ornithology. The NGC results have been combined with other sources of information to provide an overview for each mammal species (accessible from the links on the right).
Each species overview contains the following information:
- conservation status and relevant legislation
- population size and distribution
- trends in bags for the UK, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
- percentage change in bags over time for the same areas and for environmental zones
- comparison with any corresponding trend from the BBS
- if data permit, historical trends in bags going back to 1900.
These web pages replace the written reports that the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust produced annually for JNCC under the Tracking Mammals Partnership from 2006 to 2010. They represent the latest stage in a process of making the information contained within the NGC more widely available, a process which began with Stephen Tapper's Game Heritage: An Ecological Review from Shooting and Gamekeeping Records, published in 1992 by Game Conservancy Ltd.
The information in this report is copyright of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. It is free to use provided that the source is duly acknowledged. This report should be cited as: Aebischer,N.J., Davey,P.D. & Kingdon,N.G. (2011). National Gamebag Census: Mammal Trends to 2009. Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, Fordingbridge (http://www.gwct.org.uk/ngcmammals).