June

England’s flagship farming scheme returns, but funding gaps and policy missteps threaten both nature and food production.

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?