Our 2024-2028 Strategy for a resilient working countryside
The conservation world is collectively trying to tackle the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. The GWCT has an important role to play because of the way in which we work with farmers, river keepers, gamekeepers, moorland managers, and others in England, Scotland and Wales. By helping them work collaboratively at significant scale and putting our science into practice, the GWCT has a big impact. In a nutshell, our aim is to achieve landscape-scale nature recovery to the point of resilience.
By the end of this Strategic Plan, the GWCT will have ensured that the rural community will be recognised as contributing to reversing biodiversity loss through combining food production and sustainable game and wildlife management, delivering excellent environmental outcomes. The people who manage 72% of the UK’s land should be recognised as working conservationists and trusted to deliver in accordance with good science and best practice.
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Goal 1: An evolving research programme
We will maintain game-related research, and continue to focus research on species recovery, long-term population resilience, and routes to net environmental gain at landscape-scale, also exploring opportunities for collaboration with international partners.
Our Research team has already embraced new technologies, from GPS tracking and drones to DNA analysis, employing AI to speed up data processing, and novel statistical analysis to inform management.
We see a continued need to invest in our data support team to ensure timely scientific outputs, increase data collection by practitioners, and to facilitate modelling of likely outcomes of policy options and land management scenarios.
We will extract new knowledge from long-term datasets which go back to the 1960s whilst continuing to collect data and build the legacy of these projects.
Almost every piece of our science over the years has made use of these datasets, but now their decades of data make them intrinsically valuable in their own right.
Goal 2: Expanding our use of practitioner evidence
One of the first things we get asked by land managers is: ‘What monitoring can we do to know if we are succeeding?’
The GWCT is launching an expanded Practitioner Evidence Programme to deliver cost-effective farmland and moorland monitoring that farmers and gamekeepers can use to evidence biodiversity gains, support licence applications, and track species recovery.
Goal 3: Using land manager collaboration to deliver biodiversity recovery at scale
The GWCT has always worked closely with land managers. Environmental Farmer Groups have an ambition to provide a reversal of biodiversity loss, clean water, and net carbon zero farming at river catchment scale.
We know from discussions with EFG farmers that those targets are largely achievable; this is a replicable and scalable model to deliver against the nation’s targets.
Over decades, the GWCT has earned the trust of hundreds of farmers and land managers up and down the country who now want to collaboratively contribute to solving the biodiversity and climate change crises.
Goal 4: Boosting our education and engagement programme
The GWCT’s vision for a thriving countryside rich in game and wildlife needs those who live in, work in, and manage the countryside to be aware of our research and be open to adopting our advice.
We will continue to deliver our sector-leading best practice courses for practitioners across England, Scotland, and Wales, designing future courses to meet the needs of changing environmental policy.
Recognising the value of youth engagement, we will extend and develop our further and higher education engagement with colleges and universities, expanding our current work with the younger generation by providing educational content for secondary education (including the Natural History GCSE) and engaging with primary audiences where appropriate.
We also see a continued and growing need to continue raising awareness and educating the general public through our everyday interactions, utilising media channels and face-to-face encounters at conferences, events, and shows to help achieve this.
Goal 5: Embracing a new era of communications
To effectively tackle the twin crises, it is vitally important that we can eloquently share our scientific knowledge and practical experience to help the general public, land managers, and policymakers understand both the issues we face, and how to solve them.
We want to further embrace the tools available to us and continue empowering our existing audiences to do good, whilst also attracting and educating new ones.
Maximising our use of targeted marketing and adopting well-focused, interdepartmental communication strategies will play a major role in this, as will improved use of high-impact engagement tools such as social media campaigns, videos and short films, and publications such as Think Pieces.
The review and update of our offer to members and other supporters, a new CRM, and the development of a new website will be central to this, allowing us to be methodical and data-led in our approach.