Game shoot estate stars in Countryfile special

Primetime spotlight on working conservation

A Hampshire estate with an active game shoot has been held up as a model of conservation success on BBC One’s Countryfile, with GWCT’s decade-long work with wading birds reaching a primetime audience on Easter Sunday.

The special, broadcast on 5 April, centred on Bisterne Estate near Ringwood in the Avon Valley, where GWCT has spent 10 years working with landowner Hallam Mills to restore wader populations across arable fields and water meadows along the river. Presenters Matt Baker and Margherita Taylor spent three days on location with three separate film crews.

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Wader recovery in focus

GWCT wetland ecologist Lizzie Grayshon guided Taylor around the water meadows, locating nests and pointing out lapwing and redshank pairs that had returned to breed. Rupert Brewer, game and wildlife manager at Bisterne, accompanied the presenter on a drive across the estate to show the conservation work carried out over the past decade, including methods of predator control.

Among the measures on display was electric fencing, installed by Mr Brewer to protect lapwing nests. He was candid about its limitations. “When you’re dealing with such rare birds, you’ve got to use all the tools in the box, as it were,” he said. “Obviously, badgers and otters are protected species, and we enjoy having them here, so the electric fence is the tool for those guys.” Asked what other methods were at his disposal, he said: “You’ve got to get the habitat right, the electric fences and then that will give you some sort of justification to take other methods if necessary.”

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Balancing productivity and biodiversity

Mr Brewer said the programme had shown that a working estate need not choose between productivity and conservation. “Farming, forestry and a game shoot can all function efficiently, while enabling successful and demonstrable conservation, species recovery and recording science.”

Ms Grayshon said the scale of the filming had grown considerably during pre-production. “We often get some interest from programmes like Countryfile. However, it’s really rare for these things to actually happen. Often filming can get cancelled as other projects fit the programme’s brief better or are easier to film, so when this one took off I was really excited, and the more we talked with Countryfile the bigger it got.”

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Positive response to broadcast

The response since broadcast had been encouraging, Ms Grayshon added. “The feedback since the episode has gone out has been great. You don’t get to see anything before it goes live so it’s a bit nerve-racking.”

The episode is available on BBC iPlayer.