GWCT News Blog

For barn owls, nesting sites have become an important factor in the life cycle. Loss of hollows in old trees through woodland clearance and replanting, the conversion of traditional barns on farmsteads to dwellings for humans, and the need for modern grain stores to be wildlife-free zones for food hygiene purposes have all contributed to the housing problem.

England’s flagship farming scheme returns, but funding gaps and policy missteps threaten both nature and food production.

Recently we have been involved in an alternative auditing scheme called Trusted Game, an audit-based scheme aimed to ensure the health and welfare of gamebirds on shoots and game farms. It draws on proven systems from other industries and offers a practical route to achieving high standards, providing reassurance to the shoots, tenants, landowners and consumers.

Climate change continues to create challenges for British farms but sometimes the weather turns just in time and you have lots of happy farmers!

There have been varied reports from the 2025/26 season on the potential challenges that shoots have faced.

Joe Stanley was in the auditorium on 24 February for Secretary of State Emma Reynolds’ address to the National Farmers Union’s annual conference in Birmingham.

2026 sees the GWCT’s Big Farmland Bird Count return to its spiritual home of the Allerton Project, the GWCT’s research and demonstration farm on the Leicestershire-Rutland border, where it was originally launched in 2014.

The GWCT has run a game shoot at Loddington since 1993, utilising the skills of a gamekeeper to carry out supplementary feeding, habitat management and predation control. The ability to carry out these tasks has enabled us to build on our research of songbird and brown hare populations, focusing on how game management techniques can influence the breeding success of these species.

The suggestion that the solution to the “Nature Crisis” is through further SSSI designation is a flawed concept. Many of the existing SSSI sites are already not meeting their conservation objectives – simply adding more will not help.

Marcus Jansen, Executive Director of Schöffel Country, presented a cheque for £24,226 to Alastair Leake, director of the GWCT’s Allerton Project, at the Trust’s flagship demonstration farm in Loddington, Leicestershire.