11/12/2023

Thank You For Helping Our Wildlife

Pheasant -woods

With Christmas upon us, we'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for supporting our vital work. Without you, our dedicated team wouldn't be able to conduct their groundbreaking research.

Just a quick update: two months ago we launched our Gamebird Releasing Appeal, and thanks to the overwhelming generosity of our supporters, we have raised nearly half of our £60,000 target.

To recap:

  • Defra's delay in reissuing GL43 caused uncertainty amongst shoot managers (GL43 is the license for releasing gamebirds near European Protected Sites).
  • Shoots are therefore reconsidering their futures.
  • Shoot closures would remove vital protection for declining bird species, with 43% at risk of extinction.

As a result, we're on a mission to gather evidence and fight for the British countryside's future. We're halfway there but need to raise more to enable us to:

  • Study the link between gamebird releasing and fox numbers.
  • Investigate impacts on red kite, buzzard, and brown hare populations.
  • Publish a study on gamebirds in non-release sites.
  • Create a policy briefing for policymakers and the public.

This Christmas, if you can, please help us make a real difference for British wildlife.

Please Donate >

Comments

Kites

at 14:47 on 13/12/2023 by Mrs Anne Cottam

I live on the Eastern end of the Chilterns, on the top of the last hills before the Cambridge plain, and we have masses of Kites here. Certainly there is someone locally who gets butcher’s scraps to encourage them, but we can have as many as - rough estimate - 100 wheeling overhead in the afternoons, and have several hunting over the fields daily. Also a pair of Buzzards is around, nesting some years in a small wood nearby. There has been - for years - a Barn owl home in an old oak tree near, and I often wonder if their diet has been restricted by competition from kites for voles etc . ? How much do we know about what kites eat - could there be enough carrion, and how far away do you think the kites are coming from, for the butcher’s scraps?

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