Blogs

Our letter to The Guardian in response to Illegal bird of prey killings fall to lowest level in decade, but ‘true figure may be far higher’.

The small number of individuals committing these crimes undermine the reputation of the thousands of people doing wonderful work in our countryside, without whom we wouldn’t have the biodiversity, habitat, social cohesion and cultural traditions that so many of us cherish.

On Wednesday 21 June, our Scottish Head of Policy, Ross MacLeod, and Scottish Advisor, Dr Nick Hesford gave expert evidence to the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee as they debated the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill.

The debate over the conservation of hen harriers is one of the most controversial and polarised and as a consequence has been widely used in social science analyses of conservation conflicts.  

The abandonment of heather management in the Peak District National Park threatens rare birds and peatlands‚ as evidenced in a ground-breaking new report on the growing risk of catastrophic wildfire.

On February 28th, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Upland Research Team hosted the North of England Grouse Seminar at the Cedar Court Hotel in Harrogate. 

A full day ‘in-person’ symposium examining the conservation of Scotland’s four grouse species – red grouse, black grouse, capercaillie and ptarmigan - is taking place on 5 May 2023 at Balhousie Castle, Perth.

The Upland Research Group of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust would like to invite you to their Northern England Grouse Seminar, which is to be held on February 28th 2023.

In August this year GWCT chief executive Teresa Dent wrote a letter to Greenpeace’s Interim Executive Director in response to its petition calling for a complete ban on controlled burning in the uplands. We received a reply outlining Greenpeace’s position, which despite our presentation of evidence to the contrary, reiterates the viewpoint that the “weight of scientific evidence shows heather burning, in particular, is damaging to English peatlands,” and, significantly, omits to mention the important role controlled burns can play in wildfire mitigation.

You would think that there would be a single term to describe the removal of surface vegetation such as scrub, heather and grasses using fire. But this is not the case. There are regional terms, legislative terms and then just plainly incorrect terms resulting in nine possible descriptors for a single practice.