Auchnerran needs your support
Our ongoing work at Auchnerran, laid out elsewhere in these pages, is already having a major impact in Scotland:
- We have developed and enhanced valuable relationships with policy makers and influencers.
- Used those relationships to influence policy decisions wherever possible.
- We’ve begun constructive joint projects with other research organisations.
- We’ve welcomed hundreds of visitors to the farm to view our research projects, to demonstrate key political issues and to show how we are farming the land.
And we need to maintain this effort into the future as there is no doubt that challenges lay ahead for rural communities and land managers in particular, and for the game and wildlife in our countryside:
- There is huge uncertainty surrounding Brexit and how this may impact farm subsidies in Scotland, with pressure to increase environmental benefits.
- There are likely to be ongoing challenges facing game management, both in the uplands and lowlands.
- There may also be further challenges to the management of predator species.
- Clearly there is still much to learn about many declining species. Take the curlew, for example: they are likely to decline even further unless we better understand their requirements at landscape scales and unless practitioners have the tools to allow them to control predators in certain circumstances.
We are striving to meet these challenges and to be prepared for the ones we don’t know of yet, and we need your help. For example, your support could help purchase:
- A camera trap to help 24-hour monitoring of wader nests: £250
- A pair of binoculars – a crucial tool for our researchers: £500
- A wader GPS tag to reveal the movements of individual birds year-round: £750
- A pick-up truck for the research team, which underpins many of our routine activities: £17,500
Or it could help to kit out our planned visitor centre to help us show people what we do, or simply support the hard-working project staff who deliver all these activities. You may also wish to become a patron, which will entitle you to exclusive benefits too.
Even if you are unable to make a financial donation, your valuable support can be expressed in other ways, for example by following us on social media and joining in the debate or similarly in the printed media. Letters of support, likes and ‘thumbs-up’ emojis are always greatly appreciated!
Finally, if you’d like to find out more about what we do, please get in touch and come along to see the farm for yourself.