The home of Britain's Working Conservationists
Bird-ringing still presents a very valuable tool for ornithologists, particularly for the study of survival and population dynamics. The GWCT’s Wetland research team runs two long-term woodcock ringing studies, one in Hampshire and one in Cornwall, where we ring a sample of woodcock each winter and record re-encounters with ringed individuals over subsequent years.
As a conversation organisation, it’s easy focus on our own successes, whether its policy changes, research breakthroughs and backbreaking fieldwork seasons that keep our vital datasets running. What makes us even more excited is when people put that work into practice.
Barn owls in Sparsholt near Winchester can look forward to snug new homes in which to raise their owlets, as a result of the efforts of a group of students and the GWCT.
With the UK government setting an ambitious target of creating 30,000 hectares of new woodland every year by 2025 (involving a trebling of planting rates in England), there is will be an unavoidable impact on the countryside.
As food consumers we are bombarded by meal deals (for our lunchtime sandwich or for that special 3 course evening meal) and multi-buy deals (e.g. BOGOFs or 3 for £5 etc). The focus on the cost of sustaining ourselves is very real given recent food price inflation – and for many a costly monthly outgoing.
The recent People’s Trust for Endangered Species/British Hedgehog Preservation Society report on the State of the British Hedgehogs 2022 makes mixed reading. The population and distribution picture for hedgehogs is compiled from a number of different surveys addressing different objectives (e.g. British Trust for Ornithology Garden BirdWatch) – there is no dedicated hedgehog survey or indeed a standard methodology for recording hedgehogs.
A new ‘Wildlife Plot’ agri-environment option, which promises to be one of the best yet for biodiversity, has been developed as part of the GWCT’s PARTRIDGE Project on the Rotherfield Estate in Hampshire. Containing more than 20 species and based on years of research across Europe into the ideal combination of plants to maximise biodiversity, the new option is now available to farmers through government-funded schemes.
For those that work in the British countryside, it has become common knowledge that farmland birds are struggling. In the latest Birds of Conservation Concern review, 14 of the 26 farmland birds in the UK have been assigned to the Red List. The reasons behind the declines in these species are numerous, however one of particular relevance to seed-eating birds in Wales is the loss of mixed farming.
Despite national declines, moths at the Allerton Project are going from strength to strength. John Szczur explains why.
The announcement of the Landscape Recovery element of the Environmental Land Management Scheme was greeted with enthusiasm by those who advocate rewilding approaches. Although the scheme wording does not refer to rewilding, the focus on radical and large-scale approaches to threatened native species recovery and priority habitat condition seemed to support such an approach.