WELCOME FROM THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE |
Teresa Dent CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Your membership benefits You can join your local county group and have exclusive access to advisory events. The chance to visit our pioneering Allerton Project Farm at Loddington. Free copies of Gamewise, our feature-packed magazine. Your own free personal copy of our annual Review. Participation in the exclusive members’ prize draw raffles. An invitation to our Scottish Game Fair at Scone Palace and our members’ area at the popular CLA Game Fair. Regular email updates of all our latest news and research. Pleasure from the knowledge that you’re helping the British countryside thrive both now and in the future.
he State of Nature report, published last summer by a number of UK conservation charities, illustrated that what we need is a wildlife revival. The challenge is how to do it. The GWCT is rooted in game conservation, which is all about managing a species to create a surplus, whether it be habitat, food supply or protection from predation. It does not mean creating a surplus of one species at the expense of the survival of others; but it does require one to think at a population not individual level. As Mike Clark, CEO of the RSPB, said in the pages of Country Life soon after the State of Nature report was published: ‘these declines reveal the sharp edges of nature conservation... Maybe we are seeing a revival in a game management approach and provide nature conservationists with to conservation to help waders like the golden plover. tough choices’. So maybe the first revival we are seeing is a revival in a game management approach to It will still take enormous determination and conservation. Gamekeepers of course resolve to achieve a wildlife revival – so we need no revival to adopt welcome the Scottish Gamekeepers this approach. Farmers find it initiative on wader revival (see page ...what we straightforward too – its principles 19). Nature reserves are wonderful need is a mirror livestock husbandry – food, things but we will need much more shelter and protection. done in the wider countryside, and wildlife revival It is encouraging to contemplate. projects like the Marlborough Downs I joined the Trust 12 years ago Nature Improvement Area, which and by then we had done the research that we have been involved in since the start, give a put game management options into agriglimpse of how that might be done in the future. environment schemes, but no-one else was I like to think Charles Coles OBE, who ran of the view, or prepared to acknowledge, that the Trust until 1981 and died last year, would game management had lessons of benefit for be proud of these changes, though to him it mainstream conservation. Since then a lot more would probably simply represent a reversion to research and many miles of corridor treading a previous era of common sense conservation. have gone into making the case. So it is good He is certainly a man of whom we are proud to see views changing, to find people prepared and on page 14 we give an account of our to listen to the evidence, to see more proactive personal debt to him. polices of wildlife management adopted. Some of the time we need to manage wildlife so that we can protect it.
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Director of Research Professor Nick Sotherton PhD Deputy Director of Research Nicholas Aebischer Lic ès Sc Math, PhD Director (Scotland) Adam Smith DPhil
Key dates for your diary Diary
27 March
For a full list of events taking place near you please see page 46
Highland auction The Storehouse, Evanton Chris Swift 01463 831381
26 April Nottinghamshire dinner Kelham Hall, nr Southwell Lottie Meeson 07976 207113
10 May Cambridge Clay shoot Wadlow Farm, Six Mile Bottom Richard Pemberton 07748 636564
22 June Buckinghamshire gundog day Waddesdon Manor Jennifer Thomas 01844 343477
www.gwct.org.uk
Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust Fordingbridge, Hampshire SP6 1EF Tel: 01425 652381 Fax: 01425 655848 Email: info@gwct.org.uk Reg: Charity No: 1112023 Reg: Company No. 05579632 Vat No. 665 2959 92 Patron HRH The Duke of Edinburgh KG, KT, OM, GBE President The Marquess of Salisbury PC, DL Chairman Ian Coghill Chief Executive Teresa Dent FRAgS Director of Fundraising Edward Hay Director of Marketing & Membership Andrew Gilruth Director of Policy & Public Affairs Alastair Leake PhD, FRAgS
Main contact numbers Advisory T: 01425 651013 E: advisory@gwct.org.uk Accounts T: 01425 651017 E: accounts@gwct.org.uk Marketing T: 01425 651021 E: marketing@gwct.org.uk Membership/donations T: 01425 651024/651016 E: membership@gwct.org.uk PR and media T: 01425 651000 E: press@gwct.org.uk Research T: 01425 651025 E: research@gwct.org.uk Shop T: 01425 651016 E: shop@gwct.org.uk
Get in touch
Other offices The Allerton Project T: 01572 717220 E: allerton@gwct.org.uk London/Fundraising T: 020 7290 0110 E: london@gwct.org.uk Scotland T: 01738 551511 E: scottishhq@gwct.org.uk Salmon & Trout Research Centre T: 01929 401893 E: fisheries@gwct.org.uk Editing, Design and Layout Louise Shervington 01425 651002 E: editor@gwct.org.uk Advertising, Production Mark Brown, Fellows Media Ltd, The Gallery, Manor Farm, Southam, Cheltenham, Glos GL52 3PB. Tel: 01242 259249 Email: mark@fellowsmedia.com ISSN 1757-7357
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GAMEWISE • SPRING 2014 | 5
© Laurie Campbell
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