The Cereals and Gamebirds Research Project 1984-1987. A brief resume.

Abstract

Shooting sportsmen in Britain continue to be greatly concerned about the major decline of the grey partridge over the last 30 years. Research work carried out by The Game Conservancy, showed that the intensification of farming, especially the increased use of pesticides was implicated in this decline. The Game Conservancy is a privately funded research organization working predominantly on the ecology of wild populations of many quarry species. In many previous studies, it has become very obvious that providing the requirements for game was also of great benefit for other species of farmland wildlife. Very little ecological research has been carried out on land that is being intensively farmed. Up until recently, research in agriculture has concentrated on pest suppression and production whilst research into the conservation of species has been carried out on non-arable land. It was in this context that the Cereals and Gamebirds Research Project was conceived to examine the effects of modern farming practices on non-target flora and fauna, on a farm scale and to devise methods of alleviating the adverse effects of pesticides on farmland wildlife in ways compatible with efficient modern farming and with minimum cost to the farmer.