Highlight the benefits of your shoot with a Shoot Biodiversity Assessment

By Alex Keeble, Game & Wildlife Advisor

The GWCT has demonstrated through many years of research that good game management can lead to significant benefits to wildlife. Woodlands managed for pheasants tend to support more songbirds and butterflies than non-shooting woods; this is because game shoots need to actively manage the woodlands by coppicing, creating wide rides and clear felling areas to encourage a diverse understorey of shrubs. These woodland management practices help to hold gamebirds alongside improving the habitat for species such as nesting warblers and other wildlife by allowing light to penetrate the woodland floor to encourage natural regeneration.

A diverse mix of game cover crops are planted to hold and drive gamebirds, which can benefit a wide range of farmland birds such as linnets, yellowhammers and grey partridges. Many game shoots utilise agri-environmental schemes to enhance the overall habitat on the farm by combining habitat options to coincide with the additional game cover crops. Alongside a varied range of game cover crops, game shoots often provide supplementary feeding through either hoppers or by scattering feed during the critical period of the ‘hungry gap’, which has huge benefits to wildlife. Effective predation control in the nesting season to encourage wild birds to breed successfully can also benefit other ground-nesting birds too – many of which, like lapwing and curlew, are in serious decline.

So, if game management can be so good for wildlife, why does it come in for criticism from certain quarters? Some conservationists raise concerns about the potential ecological impacts of releasing large numbers of pheasants into the countryside.

How can landowners who lease game shooting tenancies be confident that the game shooting tenants are adhering to best practice game management?

The GWCT runs a Shoot Biodiversity Assessment service to help farms, estates and game managers highlight where wildlife is benefiting from the shoot, identify any areas where there may be potential negative impacts, and work with the shoot to improve them without affecting the running of the shoot.

The assessment will also identify new opportunities where the shoot could benefit species or habitat conservation by tweaking some management. Ensuring that gamebird releasing and associated management are undertaken to a high standard, with demonstrable environmental benefits, will be crucial to securing a long-term sustainable future for game shooting, and the GWCT Shoot Biodiversity Assessment will help shoots achieve this.

GWCT Shoot Biodiversity Assessments - what’s involved?

1. A thorough on-site review of current game management and key game release areas to assess adherence to the Code of Good Shooting Practice and GWCT science-based sustainable releasing guidelines.
2. A review of predation control practice to identify any training needs and to ensure all gamekeepers are following best practice guidelines.
3. Highlight areas where the shoot is already benefiting biodiversity, and identify species and habitats on the shoot that could potentially benefit from game management.
4. Identify any areas where game management may be negatively impacting on species and habitats and work with the shoot to develop practical solutions and remedial action without negatively impacting on the running of the shoot.

What are the benefits of a GWCT Shoot Biodiversity Assessment?

1. Reassurance for buyers of game shooting that shoots are following the Code of Good Shooting Practice and are either working towards or following best practice game management guidelines.
2. A report for the shoot/landowner providing an independent assessment of the current situation and recommendations and action plan for future improvement of wildlife and habitats.
3. Reassurance for consumers and retailers of game meat that game is sourced from sustainably-managed shoots.
4. A certificate to demonstrate that the game and wildlife management activities have been independently assessed by specialist advisors from the GWCT.
5. Confidence that any leased shoots are adhering to best practice.

For further information please contact the Advisory team via lherring@gwct.org.uk or 01284 831028.