April

Many a new pen will be going up over the next couple of months, so now is a good time to think about what makes a great place to release your pheasants. It is one of the biggest investments on many shoots, and getting it right is key to success.

Our team of expert advisors are running several courses designed to promote best practice among those who manage the countryside. Places are very limited on each so book now to avoid disappointment.

Rodenticide residues have been found in 88% of barn owls by the latest annual surveillance for the UK Rodenticide Stewardship Regime, operated by the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use. The previous year’s figure was 87%.

Lawrence Gray, winner of the GWCT Norfolk MacNab Raffle, tells the story of a great weekend spent with great company.

Since launching our woodcock fundraising appeal earlier this month, we have had several members get in touch asking how we work with other organisations to further our understanding of this much-loved bird.

Conservation is sometimes misunderstood as being all about wildlife. The reality is that conservation doesn’t operate in a vacuum, away from the human world. Pristine wilderness rarely needs our meddling, unless those very wildernesses are themselves threatened by us.

According to the Curlew Recovery Partnership, around two thirds of all curlew pairs breeding in the English lowlands occupy agricultural grassland habitats affected by seasonal grass-cutting.

Here is a crucial point to understand; whatever the predator, how many you nail is not the measure of success. The key question is how much predation are you stopping?

The GWCT and BASC have teamed up again to deliver a course designed to improve best practice on DIY shoots and farm shoots. The course is aimed at shoot captains, syndicate members and anyone that manages their own small shoot.

On the evening of Monday 4th April, the newly formed GWCT South West Wales Committee held their first event courtesy of Dr Nick Fox and the Beavis Trust to visit their conservation focused 300-acre farm near Carmarthen and their lakes which are home to a beaver population.