2023

As you may already be aware, 2023 is an important year for woodcock research. For the third time since its inception in 2003, GWCT and BTO are running the national Breeding Woodcock Survey to provide a snapshot of our resident woodcock population’s size and status. 

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series of blogs, working as a research assistant at the GWCT gives me the opportunity to work on some incredibly exciting research. In early 2022 I joined the Trust’s Predation Control Studies team, where I am learning new skills from a range of new research challenges.

On-going research led by Associate Professor Andreas Heinemeyer at York University into upland management systems is beginning to show that the results of earlier research based on pre- and immediately post-burning evidence are too simplified; and even wrong when it comes to judging the carbon consequences of managed burning.

We have been waiting with increasing frustration for the publication of a draft Soil Health Action Plan for England (SHAPE) – a policy document that was promised in early 2021 during the debates over putting soil on the face of the Environment Bill (now Act).

The 2023 Big Farmland Bird Count is now underway and runs from 3-19 February 2023.

The GWCT advises all those who wish to shoot woodcock to exercise particular care and improve their knowledge of local populations, thus enabling the shoot to minimise their impact on resident birds.

The GWCT's Roger Draycott addresses some of the frequently asked questions about taking part in the Big Farmland Bird Count.

The brand new BASIS Game Management course is aimed at all individuals who have responsibility for managing a shoot, including head keepers, singlehanded keepers, estate managers, land agents, landowners, shoot managers and shoot captains.

The following management recommendations are made based on our experience of the past fifty years and the body of research we have carried out at the GWCT.

It will come as a welcome relief to the farming industry that Defra’s announcement on the 26^th of January finally puts a significant amount of detail into the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) tier of the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme.