2022

"I’d like to think that most game managers are conservationists at heart, and I’m certainly only doing my advisory service job after 40 years with the GWCT because I believe in the conservation spin off from the help that I give"

We are once again joining forces with the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) to showcase the important role farmers play when it comes to looking after farmland birds.

Farmer clusters in the Avon Valley and encircling Martin Down have put farmers at the heart of conservation and the results are there for all to see.

With Defra due to undertake a call for evidence on the future of fox snares, there has never been a better moment to make the distinction between a modern humane cable restraint that meets international standards, and the cheap and nasty wires that went before. 

At our demonstration farm, the Allerton project, we have undertaken research to understand what constitutes a healthy soil and how to measure constituents such as soil moisture as well as research considering the role of soil in crop production “in the round” i.e. from both a sustainable and profitable perspective.

The use of the term “peatland burning” (or peatland fires or burning peat) is factually incorrect and misleading when used in conjunction with criticisms of grouse moor management.

During the 2021 breeding season, the Owl Box Initiative’s monitoring team began box checks in May and continued, at occupied boxes, until the last chicks were ringed in October. The longer breeding season was, in part, due to a number of barn owl pairs across our study areas producing a second brood.

In the wake of COP26, climate change is something many of us are thinking about – and rightly so. Following COP21 in 2015, 195 nations committed to try to keep the global average temperature no more than 2°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, aiming for less than 1.5°C of warming. You might then be asking, why 1.5°C?

Speaking at this year’s Oxford Farming Conference, NFU President Minette Batters hailed the positive impact of Britain’s farmers, describing them as working conservationists and urging politicians to remember the people who lay at the heart of a better future.

This spring, GWCT researchers will be starting a new research project looking into one of the most contentious issues around the release of gamebirds in the UK: the idea that gamebird releasing may attract foxes and other generalist predators into an area.