GWCT News Blog

A spectacular celebration of conservation and the countryside for over three decades, The GWCT Scottish Game Fair, sponsored by NFU Mutual, will return to Scone Palace in Perthshire this year from Friday 24 to Sunday 26 September, for its 32nd year.

From here on in, the two most used rat poisons, bromadiolone and difenacoum will be as good as useless on my shoot, and if we were daft enough to use them, we would simply be risking sending the chemicals up the food chain to the likes of our barn owls, kestrels and red kites, while having no significant impact on the rats.

The May 2021, the government ceded to calls for a ‘net zero’-style target for nature in the Environment Bill by introducing a Species Abundance Target, the detail of which is to be determined and the aim of has just been strengthened to “halt species decline by 2030”.

The Owl Box Initiative strives to be a conduit for collaboration and knowledge sharing between land managers, volunteers and conservation organisations, and recently, I had the honour of meeting with Major (Rtd) Nigel Lewis, a prominent volunteer ornithologist who runs the Lewis Raptor and Owl Group, based in Wiltshire.

Joe Stanley reports from his new home in our great countryside – the Allerton Project on the Leicestershire/Rutland border at the delightful village of Loddington.

A ‘perfect storm’ of positives looks set to make this one of the best GWCT Scottish Game Fairs yet – providing a massive shot in the arm for the industry.

With the home bred ducks busy with their test flights, and the first autumn migrants arriving, now is the moment to start feeding your flight pond. With luck, some of the families will have mums and dads that visited you last season, so will be only too happy to investigate now. Wouldn’t it be a pity if they found that the cupboard was bare?

After a dismal year regarding COVID-19 the coming season has finally begun to look brighter, game days are sought after, and we can all sigh with relief that normality will hopefully return. Unfortunately, on the other hand the weather has failed to be as bright as hoped, arable crops are still yet to be combined, along with various hay fields making wandering released pheasants a challenge to dog back to the surrounding pens.

NFU Mutual’s agent and branch offices in Scotland are delighted to have nominated 32 local charities to receive a combined donation of more than £206,000 from a national £2m ‘Agency Giving Fund’ launched by NFU Mutual’s Head Office.

It is alarming to see the imbalance caused by garden bird feeders laid out for clearly. Whilst well-intentioned, reports that it is boosting numbers of our more common garden birds and, in turn, threatening their subordinate counterparts, such as the willow tit and pied flycatcher should be a real cause for concern.