NEWS

Business Backed Conservation Award Boosts Rare Partridges In Wessex
24/11/2008

Despite the atrocious wet summer weather for the past two years, Susie Sheldon, owner of Kings Manor Farm, Freshwater, Isle of Wight and farm manager Anthony Grieve have managed to boost the number of rare grey partridges on their farm and in recognition of this huge achievement they were recently awarded the prestigious Dreweatt Neate Grey Partridge Conservation Trophy for their efforts to save this iconic farmland bird.

The magnificent partridge trophy was presented to Susie Sheldon during the winter meeting of the Wessex Grey Partridge Group, which is organised by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust and held at Sparsholt College, Hampshire.

The group, which was set up to try and boost grey partridge recovery in the region, attracts support from farmers and landowners located across the counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset. To be eligible to win the grey partridge trophy, members of the group submit counts of grey partridges in the spring of 2008 and this annual award is then presented to the estate or farm that has contributed most to the conservation of this rare bird.

The wild grey partridge is one of our fastest declining farmland bird species.  This once common bird has disappeared from large tracts of the countryside and its population has dropped from over a million pairs in the 1950s to just 75,000 in 2000.  In an effort to reverse this decline the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust as lead partner for the grey partridge Biodiversity Action Plan, has set up regional groups across the country and runs a national grey partridge count scheme, which records the rise and fall of grey partridges.

Peter Thompson, Farmland Biodiversity Advisor with the Trust said, “The farm was selected as the winners in the Wessex region because they have managed to hold their 14 pairs of grey partridges at a constant level despite the appalling wet weather conditions over the past two summers.  Very few people across the country have managed to do this.  This has been achieved by implementing predator control and by creating habitats such as grass margins and in particular beetle banks, which Anthony Grieve, the farm manager, reports have been the key to the success of grey partridge recovery on the farm.