Where I farm in Galloway, curlew numbers seem to be declining every year. There are a number of drivers for this collapse, not least the rapid expansion of commercial forestry in our uplands and a dramatic ramping up of grassland management. During the course of the spring, I set out…
Conservation
What does the rising cost of feed mean for estate conservation budgets?
Deli-deli-deli-tak ye” goes the song of the male yellowhammer, albeit with a Scottish twang. Well, we are a border county here in Northumberland after all. The yellowhammer perched high on a roadside hawthorn hedge broke from his commanding position as my Polaris Ranger neared. This caused a chain reaction as…
Charles Smith-Jones discusses the problem with rewilding
It’s a fashionable word that you seem to hear everywhere these days, but if you ask 10 people to define what rewilding means, you’ll get 10 wildly different answers. To some it might be a matter of leaving nature to its own devices, while to others it suggests a more…
The problem with political intervention in wildlife management
Politicians should really keep well away from matters when it comes to wildlife management, for the simple reason that very few, if any of them, know enough about it to make the correct decisions. To compound matters, when a ruling party has to rely on another party with only a…
Grey squirrels – the science behind the impact of the invasive species
I imagine most people reading this will agree that grey squirrels are a wholly unwelcome addition to our national fauna. However, the majority of Britons aren’t rustics or readers of Shooting Times. More than 80% of the UK population lives in towns and cities and for the majority of them…
Biodegradable shotgun cartridges – questions still loom
The move towards biodegradable shotgun cartridges, and wads and steel shot gets closer and closer by the day, but there are still some questions that need answering on the ramifications of the transition. I’ve been using the stuff on and off for years on shooting grounds that allow its use.…
What is rewilding?
I expect most readers of Shooting Times will have a similar opinion of Chris Packham as mine, but I thought he plumbed new depths when he tried his latest PR stunt, calling on the royal family to rewild their lands. Rewilding – what is it anyway? Pick about the only…
Saving the curlew
Multiple campaigns are under way to help reverse the decline of the curlew, led by shooting and conservation organisations. There are only around 300 pairs of breeding curlew left south of Birmingham and, at the current rate of loss, they are expected to disappear from the region in the next…
What did we learn from Langholm?
(More background on Rob Yorke here). There is a chunk of moorland in Scotland that has been subject to a 24-year project involving upland land uses, habitat, nature conservation designations, biodiversity, fieldsports and rural economics. It all started with the Joint Raptor Study (JRS), funded by major conservation organisations, on…
How to hand rear injured or orphaned wildlife properly
What would you do if you saw an injured squirrel or orphaned deer in trouble on land near you? David Whitby examines the ethics behind hand rearing wildlife back to health and even keeping them as pets – have you ever had to hand rear corvids, foxes or deer in…
Why are the house martins moving out?
When we moved into our current Norfolk home there were house martins nesting under the eaves, but there aren’t any now. Some people dislike the mess made by these delightful little birds, especially if the nest is attached to the eaves directly above a window, but we miss our house…
Meet Dragon – the last horse on the beating line?
A horse moving with a line of beaters isn’t a sight you’re going to see much these days. In fact Frank Shellard says he is probably the last person riding on the beating line in the UK. (If you know anybody else, please get in touch.) I asked him what…
Golden plovers: a rare asset
We never know how many migrant birds will return each autumn, but I am anticipating a shortage of golden plovers in the west of the UK, because this has been a strange spring and summer in Iceland. The national picture will be complicated by the fact that our winter flocks…
Father of the conservation movement
I am not a great one for conspiracy theories, but every now and then you come across an omission that is repeated so often and so consistently that it can only be a result of an attempt to deceive, whether conscious or unconscious. One such involves the life of Sir…
Holkham Hall Norfolk’s lady gamekeeper Catherine Leach
What springs to mind when you think of Holkham Hall in Norfolk? The fabulous beach featured in Shakespeare in Love? Perhaps the tremendous 25,000-acre estate that covers miles of shoreline and some of the most beautiful parts of Norfolk? What about the Victoria Inn, where you can sit and listen…
Why back-garden bird lovers are wrong to feed kites
The town of Reading is home to a different type of commuter these days, with hundreds of red kites arriving each morning to take advantage of food that is put out for them by people who like getting close to nature without having to leave their own homes. In a…
The battle to bring back Welsh grouse
It is difficult to imagine the grouse moors of Wales as they were 100 years ago. A look at the gamebook of one of the estates in the Ceiriog Valley in north-east Wales shows that 2,360 red grouse were shot in the 1913 season, and the same record shows this…
How much wildlife have we got?
We are already doing great things, but with a few tweaks we can make our shoots so much more wildlife friendly, says Dr Roger Draycott
Why we need predator control
How much more evidence will they have to amass before countryside saviours GWCT are listened to by the Government? asks Editor-at-Large, Robin Scott.
Conservation in action
Small shoot owners know that the benefits of a wildlife-friendly shoot stretch far beyond shooting