July

Shooting instructor Georgie Stanford shares some tips for getting youngsters ready for the new shooting season.

Choose from a great selection of books on conservation, wildlife, game cookery and shooting, including GWCT titles.

Despite the record-high temperatures last week at Llanelwedd near Builth Wells, the Royal Welsh Show 2022 still saw attendees visit in their thousands to this infamous agricultural show. 

Mark Glover’s view that gamebird releasing causes environmental carnage, “Slaughter of UK’s imported gamebirds carries a heavy price, 22 July”, is not supported by the scientific evidence.

We would like to welcome you to two special events on the GWCT stand on the opening day of The Game Fair, Friday 29th July at Ragley Hall.

“Pheasants are useless mothers”; how often I have heard those word, but are they true? This view certainly has a long history, and way back in 1895 the Rev H. A. Macpherson said they are “careless, clumsy mothers” in the fur, feather and fin volume on Pheasants.

Every ten years the BTO and GWCT collaborate on a survey to estimate the UK's breeding woodcock population. Watch this short video by the GWCT's Olly Dean featuring our Head of Wetlands Research Chris Heward demonstrating what's involved.

Recently a new study was published in Vet Record about badger culling and its relationship with the incidence of bovine tuberculosis (bTB). It was very quickly covered by the news and declared a “landmark study”, with the authors concluding that there is no detectable link between badger culling and any decline in incidence of bTB. However, Defra promptly issued a rebuttal and discounted the study as “methodologically flawed”.

Plug “2022 year of..” into your search engine, and you will likely come up with tiger, Chinese zodiac, ox and dog, but I wonder how many readers realise that 2022 is also the year of the gamekeeper?