2023

This October, the GWCT’s Head of Wildlife Recovery Dr Francis Buner, accompanied by placement student Jasmine Canham, was invited to give a keynote presentation on grey partridge conservation in Europe, on the occasion of the national launch event for a German-wide grey partridge recovery project called ‘Rebhuhn retten – Vielfalt fördern!’ (‘Save the grey partridge – Promote biodiversity!’).

The GWCT is delighted that the headline of the EFRA report following its soil health inquiry is that government should take soil health as seriously as it does our other critical assets of water and air.

At its heart, FRAMEwork is about sharing ideas, inspiring new approaches, and collaborating to make farmland biodiversity conservation possible on the ground. This occurred in March when the GWCT team hosted the projects’ annual meeting.

When you think of the GWCT, images of pheasants, partridges, and maybe even lapwings come to mind. But there’s something we deeply care about that might surprise you: soil.

Supplementary feeding has become a widespread management tool for declining farmland birds. In the countryside in late winter there is often not enough natural seed food, which causes a hungry gap between February and April when lots of birds die of starvation.