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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.

The GWCT is offering undergraduate students the opportunity to work in real-life conservation research. Each year the Trust hosts students studying ecology, conservation and computer science-related degrees for one-year placements as part of their degrees. Students work alongside some of the leading scientists in their subjects on important game and wildlife conservation research.

The Julian Gardner Awards, run by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, is inviting amateur photographers to submit their images of the British countryside to the 2021 competition.

The unsung heroes of conservation are being celebrated by a new website, Working for Wildlife, launched by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT). The website profiles what the GWCT calls ‘Working Conservationists’: farmers and land managers across the UK who have made a long-term commitment to manage their land for the benefit of wildlife.