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As we bellow out the 12 Days of Christmas this festive season, not many people will realise that the ‘partridge in the pear tree’ is actually in need of a huge amount of support following a massive decline in numbers over the past 40 years.

Over 80 supporters of the Bristol and North Somerset branch of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) raised more than £8,000 for the charity at their annual fund-raising dinner.

The wild grey partridge, immortalised in the traditional Christmas carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas, is one of our most rapidly declining farmland birds, having suffered a massive 86 per cent decline over the past forty years. To secure the future of this iconic Christmas species, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) is appealing to farmers and gamekeepers to extend their festive cheer to grey partridge conservation this winter.

There’s still time to enter one of this year’s best charity prize draws for those with an interest in the finest country sports.

They have been widely featured on the BBC programme Springwatch as well as the BBC’s One Show. Now the secret life of the elusive woodcock is being revealed in west Wales by one of the world’s leading authorities on woodcock ecology, Dr Andrew Hoodless on Friday 15th November at the Abercothi Estate in Carmarthen.

The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) is urging shoots across the country to get involved in their 2013/14 shoot sweepstake scheme to help raise funds for their vital game and wildlife research.

The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust is running free training sessions for farmers, gamekeepers and estate workers on fox snaring and controlling corvids using cage traps on 12th November 2013 at Lastingham Village Hall on the North York Moors.

It’s poignant that not so very long ago, the wild grey partridge was a very common bird that flourished on arable farmland across the country. However, in the past 40 years its numbers have plummeted by more than 80 per cent and leading research charity the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), based in Fordingbridge, Hampshire reports that they have become locally extinct in many areas.

Last summer was the wettest for 100 years and wild grey partridges were one particular species that paid the price for the appalling wet conditions. Although many young partridge chicks failed to survive, recent figures released by research charity, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) showed that there is still reason to be optimistic as the over-winter survival of adult birds was much better than expected.

Leading research charity, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) is delighted to announce the winner of its prestigious Yorkshire conservation trophy dedicated to one of the UK’s most iconic but rare birds – the wild grey partridge.