Blogs

Recently a new study was published in Vet Record about badger culling and its relationship with the incidence of bovine tuberculosis (bTB). It was very quickly covered by the news and declared a “landmark study”, with the authors concluding that there is no detectable link between badger culling and any decline in incidence of bTB. However, Defra promptly issued a rebuttal and discounted the study as “methodologically flawed”.

Plug “2022 year of..” into your search engine, and you will likely come up with tiger, Chinese zodiac, ox and dog, but I wonder how many readers realise that 2022 is also the year of the gamekeeper? 

Earlier this year the GWCT policy team was invited to respond to a consultation on Environmental Targets. We feel the 25-year Environmental Plan is ambitious, but it will take focused effort to.

Here are our thoughts...

The earth we live on is an intricately engineered, delicately balanced life-support system. Be it a worm, a tree, a mole, or a bee; a cloud, a teaspoon of soil, or the sea – almost anything in the environment that you can name (even the common wasp) is part of our life-support machine.

After including Land Healer: How Farming Can Save Britain’s Countryside by Jake Fiennes in our newsletter on Tuesday we have received a large number of orders for the new book.

This is the second year of my PhD study of nest and chick survival of curlew in the New Forest. This season GWCT Head of Predation Control Studies Mike Short and I found a total of 28 curlew nests (approximately half of the pairs in the New Forest), compared with 23 last year.

I’m not quite sure where this year has gone but I can’t believe it’s the summer already. As we head into Game Fair season I thought I’d just write to let you know that our 2022 Gun Draw launched at the start of the year and once again William Powell have kindly provided us with an unbelievable prize.

Following our recent news story about solitary bees, Tony Stutely got in touch. He told us a little about his own inspiring efforts to support solitary bees in his garden and beyond.

Both bumblebees and honeybees are eusocial meaning that they live in highly co-operative colonies with many worker bees serving a queen by caring for her young. But did you know that 90% of the UK’s 270 bee species are actually solitary bees?