Maintaining our research is vital
When people make wild accusations or use bad information to argue their agenda, our research comes to the fore.
We can call upon more than 50 uninterrupted years of data from farmland in Sussex, 25 years of annual count data in the uplands, and 11 years of tagging 10,000 salmon on the River Frome. But if we can’t pay our scientists, this all stops.
The immediate impact on the trust of the current circumstances is likely to be a loss of £1 million due to the cancellation of all fundraising events. Without the GWCT, the countryside would look very different.
Grey partridge could be on the verge of extinction in the UK. Regulation for game shooting would likely be very different. The breadth of research carried out shows how game management can continue to be sustainable and benefit wider wildlife.
We have set up a dedicated club to welcome the next 500 members that join us in our hour of need. Those that join over the next six months will receive a specially commissioned GWCT 500 Club badge and they will be invited to a celebratory welcome drinks party to meet existing members in 2021.
Teresa Dent, chief executive of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust.
