Sutherland head stalker named Working Conservationist of the Year

A head stalker who has spent 19 years combining deer management with woodland and river restoration in Sutherland has been named Working Conservationist of the Year at the 2026 Schöffel Countryside Awards. David Allison of the Grosvenor Reay Forest Estate collected the award at a ceremony hosted by Coutts Landed Estates in London on 9 November, where the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) and Schöffel Country crowned six winners from 29 finalists drawn from more than 70 nominations.

Who won the six categories?

Mr Allison, whose estate is part of the 10-year Project Laxford partnership for wild Atlantic salmon and a programme to plant more than one million native trees, won the category that honours an individual who has devoted much of their life to conservation. The Nature-Friendly Farm or Estate award went to The Grange and Moat Farms at Whiston, Northamptonshire, where Andrew and William Pitts farm around 600ha of productive arable land with direct drilling, linked habitat corridors and a particular focus on grey partridges.

The Farm-Environment Partnership award went to the Manhood Peninsula Farmers Cluster Group near Chichester, six family farms across almost 2,000ha whose wild grey partridge work includes a broody-hen rearing programme, with released birds since breeding in the wild. Charles Rangeley-Wilson and the River Stiffkey project at Warham, Norfolk, run with Norfolk Rivers Trust and Holkham Estate, took the Wetland and Watercourse award for returning 2.5km of chalkstream to its historic meandering course.

Two Atlantic Salmon Trust staff completed the list: John Chantry won Innovation in Conservation for a drone survey method using LiDAR, thermal imaging and 3D mapping that a judge found around 80% faster and 60% cheaper than conventional river surveys, and research assistant Maaike Vrancken was named Rising Star for her work tagging juvenile salmon.

Judges spent the summer in the field

The judging panel of GWCT ecologists and advisers, joined by Charlie Ireland of Clarkson’s Farm, the hedgelayer and writer Richard Negus and Holkham’s general manager of conservation Jake Fiennes, visited every finalist over the summer. Three of the six winners are working to bring back the wild Atlantic salmon and two have made the grey partridge their cause. Marcus Janssen, executive director of Schöffel Country, said: “The calibre of entries across the six award categories has, once again, been very high, and choosing our winners has been incredibly challenging.” He added: “These are the people who know the habitats and species – and the threats and opportunities they face – more intimately than anyone.”

Nick von Westenholz, chief executive of the GWCT, said: “This year’s winners demonstrate that conservation is not simply about protecting nature but actively managing and restoring it.” He added: “At a time when the future of land management is increasingly under scrutiny, it has never been more important to demonstrate, through robust scientific evidence, the benefits that these practical conservation measures deliver.”

What happens next

The awards return in 2027, with nominations opening in January, and the GWCT is encouraging keepers, stalkers, farmers and estates to put forward the working conservation that normally goes unrecorded. Megan Lock, the GWCT’s senior farm environment adviser and a judge, said the winners showed what collaboration across farm and estate boundaries can achieve: “Successful conservation projects are built on collaboration, local knowledge and working across farm and estate boundaries.”