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The United Nations has declared 2015 as the International Year of Soils with the aim of helping to raise awareness of why soils are important for food security and the environment. By its very nature without this essential element we would not be able to grow food, provide wildlife habitats, prevent flooding or have clean water.

As well as being Ascot week this is also the peak hatching time for young partridge chicks. The question is will there be enough insects on farmland across the country this week to help these declining young birds survive?

A new study undertaken by the Organic Research Centre with the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust found that agroecology – food production that makes the best use of nature’s goods and services while not damaging precious resources – can help maintain agricultural productivity.

An organic farmer in the Cotswolds is leading the charge in helping two extremely rare birds by devoting an impressive 17 per cent of his fields to wildlife.

It is now widely recognised that game and other struggling farmland birds have a better chance of survival when over-winter supplementary grain is provided to sustain them over the leanest times of the year. But until now there has been no systematic research on how much of this costly, but life-saving food is wasted on rats and other undesirable pests.

A new study published in the science journal Biological Conservation identified that double the amount of uncultivated land currently being devoted to bees and other pollinators on farmland needs to be created to boost declining insects such as bees, butterflies and hoverflies.

Researchers at the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), who are studying wild grey partridges – one of our fastest declining farmland birds – are hoping for a warm summer this year to repeat the breeding success of 2014, which saw an encouraging 18 per cent increase in grey partridges.

An army of farmers, gamekeepers and land managers looking after nearly one million acres of farmland turned out in their droves this winter to count their birds in the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s second Big Farmland Bird Count, which ran between 7 – 15th February.

An army of more than 2,000 farmers and gamekeepers who registered to take part in the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Big Farmland Bird Count will be out in force this week between 7 – 15th February to see how their conservation efforts are helping some of our most rapidly declining birds.

Alex Towns hung up his Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust boots last month (Monday 26 January) when he retired from the post of education and events assistant with GWCT Scotland.