2026

Recently we have been involved in an alternative auditing scheme called Trusted Game, an audit-based scheme aimed to ensure the health and welfare of gamebirds on shoots and game farms. It draws on proven systems from other industries and offers a practical route to achieving high standards, providing reassurance to the shoots, tenants, landowners and consumers.

Later this year, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust will be working to develop fair co-existence between wildcats and people. GWCT will liaise with estates and practitioners in the wildcat release area to facilitate tracking and develop best practice guidance to mitigate gamebird impacts. The Trust also aims to build evidence recording to support wildcat capture and relocation licences, engaging with key partners, communities and government agencies.

Climate change continues to create challenges for British farms but sometimes the weather turns just in time and you have lots of happy farmers!

Wasps are widely disliked. Renowned as unforgiving and unnecessary, delivering stings which they have the cheek to survive, unlike our beloved bees, often doomed to a single, fatal defence. But what if these wasps were just as much a farmer’s ally as pollinating bees?

In recent decades, farmers have been steadily re-establishing hedges, but accurate national data on how many have been planted, and crucially, on their condition, remains patchy at best.

The just published RSPB/Leeds University paper on the negative impact that prescribed burning has on air quality through modelling provides a useful contribution to the debate on the role of prescribed or managed burning in ecosystem service delivery. But it should not be the sole basis for policy determination.

Thanks to all those who took part in the survey. The briefing provides background evidence for why the following points should be considered when reviewing the quarry list.

Read our response to the BBC's recent episode of the Secret Garden. 

Many would agree that an ideal lawn looks very different from an ideal field, meadow or moorland – others might feel the opposite. Yet despite these differences, there are shared lessons in how we manage grassy places and what they can offer nature.

We would urge all members and supporters to respond to the consultation on the Schedule 2.1 quarry list review to help ensure regulation is based on evidence. Defra is proposing several changes, which have little data to support them, fail to acknowledge evidence of self-regulation and voluntary restraint, and risk being counterproductive.