By Alex Keeble, Central England Game & Wildlife Advisor
The Allerton Project, established in 1992, is a research and demonstration farm managed by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust at Loddington, Leicestershire and covers approximately 320 hectares. The farm at Loddington was a bequest from Lord and Lady Allerton and it consists of a mixed farmland landscape with undulating topography, clay soils and woodland. The main role of the Allerton Project is to research the effects of different farming methods on wildlife and the environment, sharing results of our research through advisory and educational activities.
Our work covers natural capital accounting, agri-environment schemes and regenerative farming systems. From soil and water, to woodland and environmental habitat that increases biodiversity, our aim is to build farmland resilience. Our own research team collaborate with other research organisations and help co-supervise numerous PhD and MSc projects.
Through our visitor centre we have guests from businesses, policy makers, non-government organisations, regulators, farmers, advisors, students and schools. We have several initiatives that involve the local community to help improve a shared understanding of agricultural and environmental issues.
The GWCT has run a game shoot at the farm 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. Although initially the game shoot was run as a wild-bird shoot, since 2011 we have released approximately 2,600 pheasant poults across six release pens.
We stock these pens using our sustainable releasing guidelines of 1,000 birds per hectare of release pen (400 per acre) within plantation woods (non-sensitive). Within sensitive semi-ancient woodland sites we release 700 birds per hectare of release pen (280 per acre). These figures are based on research studies carried out by the GWCT into how pheasant densities effect the ground flora of the site; it is apparent that these densities throughout the release pens at Loddington provide ample space for the birds to thrive and create minimal impact on the surrounding environment.
Although stocking densities are key to the success of our growing poults, the release pen habitat significantly effects the ability of the pheasant poults to flourish after being rehabilitated from the rearing field. Woodland management is an ongoing process which needs to be carried out yearly within each release pen to maintain 1/3 open cover, 1/3 low sheltering cover and a 1/3 mid-storey roosting. Maintaining clearings, thinning trees and protecting regrowth is key to creating the ultimate pheasant pen habitat.
We purchase our pheasant poults from Worcestershire Game Farm. Half of the birds are reared with enrichment and half without as part of an ongoing scientific study of whether providing enrichment leads to a significant increase in the ability of birds to roost and perform better than non-enriched rearing pens. The birds are patagial wing-tagged and noted down after every shoot day to allow us to understand the dispersal and returns from each release pen. On many occasions we have retrieved wing tags showing that some birds are up to three years old.
We carry out ten driven days a year along with three boundary days and one HPR trial. These days can be purchased via a multitude of avenues but the majority of our days are sold through GWCT events as auction lots. A typical shoot day includes four or five drives across our undulating land, with a yield of between 100-150 birds. The demonstration shoot at Loddington allows us to show visitors to the Allerton Project the biodiversity net gain of running a game shoot, and explain how sustainable game management can benefit an array of farmland species along with adding to the local economy.
For the past three seasons we have run our shoot days as non-lead only. This move enables us to discuss with guns the reasoning behind our transition and install confidence that shooting non-lead is required to improve the sector by opening up markets of game meat via Eat Wild.
If you are interested in purchasing a day, please contact Alex Keeble at akeeble@gwct.org.uk.