Taken from an article written by Sir Max Hasting for The Field, August 2015.
"The research conducted by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) over the past three decades has demonstrated beyond rational argument that keepered uplands sustain a far higher density of all kinds of wildlife than those untended.
"I make no apology for making a plea for more shooters to join the GWCT, to which a shamefully small proportion contributes.
"If our sport survives into the next generation, it will not be thanks to cries from the fieldsports community about personal freedom and the virtue of recognising man as a natural hunter, which impress few people either in Parliament or the country at large.
"It will be because the GWCT makes the case for the contribution of management and gamekeeping to the environment through top-class science, which costs money.
"We are wholly dependent on the GWCT's work to make the sustainability argument, which alone can prevail in a hostile social and political climate."
Please join the GWCT online today >