September

The cost of rural theft in Scotland fell 25% to an estimated £1.7m in 2020 as COVID restrictions, rural policing and beefed up farm security kept criminals out of the countryside, according to figures released by leading rural insurer, NFU Mutual.

A spectacular celebration of conservation and the countryside for over three decades, The GWCT Scottish Game Fair, sponsored by NFU Mutual, will return to Scone Palace in Perthshire this year from Friday 24 to Sunday 26 September, for its 32nd year.

From here on in, the two most used rat poisons, bromadiolone and difenacoum will be as good as useless on my shoot, and if we were daft enough to use them, we would simply be risking sending the chemicals up the food chain to the likes of our barn owls, kestrels and red kites, while having no significant impact on the rats.

The May 2021, the government ceded to calls for a ‘net zero’-style target for nature in the Environment Bill by introducing a Species Abundance Target, the detail of which is to be determined and the aim of has just been strengthened to “halt species decline by 2030”.

The Owl Box Initiative strives to be a conduit for collaboration and knowledge sharing between land managers, volunteers and conservation organisations, and recently, I had the honour of meeting with Major (Rtd) Nigel Lewis, a prominent volunteer ornithologist who runs the Lewis Raptor and Owl Group, based in Wiltshire.