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While unseasonal weather has played havoc with this year’s harvest, we should also stop to think of its impact on wildlife, according to experts at the GWCT. The grey partridge, known by conservationists as the ‘barometer of the countryside’, is one species likely to be affected by a dry spring and a dull, wet July and August.

The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) has published the 2020 annual report for the Game & Wildlife Scottish Demonstration Farm at Auchnerran on Deeside and, despite the pandemic impacting on research and demonstration activity, the farming operation performed well over the year.

Leading UK conservation science charity the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust recently invited BBC Countryfile to visit three farms on the Hampshire/Dorset border to see farmer-led conservation in action. The Countryfile episode will be broadcast at 6pm on Sunday 9 May.

Participation in an annual nationwide survey of farmland birds has more than doubled. Britain’s farmers and gamekeepers have shown their long-term commitment to conservation alongside productive land-use by completing this year’s GWCT Big Farmland Bird Count in record numbers.

A new collaboration aims to show how farmers can work together to achieve the recovery of some of the UK’s most threatened farmland bird species, including grey partridge, curlew and lapwing. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) is working with a group of Shropshire farmers to establish the Corvedale Farmland Wildlife Project, which will put farmland conservation techniques based on the Trust’s extensive research into practice on the ground.

Heavy snow and freezing conditions have hampered land managers’ efforts to complete the annual GWCT Big Farmland Bird Count across much of the UK. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) has taken the decision to extend the wildlife survey to enable people to count safely. The event was due to run from 5-14 February, but people can now carry out the count until Sunday 21 February.

The 2021 GWCT Big Farmland Bird Count is underway. From this morning (5 February) until Valentine’s Day, farmers and land managers across the country will be picking up their binoculars and heading to a corner of their land to spend 30 minutes counting birds. And it is not too late to get involved.

“As custodians of the largest songbird habitat in the country, farmers, land managers and gamekeepers play a crucial role in the survival of the UK’s farmland birds,” says Dr Roger Draycott of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust.

The GWCT’s Big Farmland Bird Count (BFBC) is pleased to announce two events in Wales to help record what farmland birds are present at this time of year before the official count from February 5-14.

Introducing tree leaves to a sheep’s diet could play an important role in reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions, suggests research presented at this today's Intercropping for Sustainability conference.