life
COUNTRYSIDE, WILDLIFE & FARMING
Conservation Award Boosts
Rare Partridges
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
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Article by Tony Ridd
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.”
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