Conservation wins

Now open for 2025 entries, the Purdey Awards recognise the outstanding game and habitat conservation work carried out by shoots across the UK

- Mike Swan

One of the proudest moments of my career with the GWCT's advisory service was when my friends and clients Ian and Claire Smith of Nether Hale in Kent came first in the Purdey Awards for Game & Conservation in 2003. Four years earlier, with just 350 acres to play with and a tight squeeze in the market for their main crop, the humble cauliflower, they had decided to stop growing them. Instead they would farm in a more diverse and conservation-friendly way, and do whatever they could to rescue a grey partridge population on the brink.

The results were spectacular, with the pair count going from three in spring 2000 to 25 and rising by 2003. There were parallel increases in many other farmland birds, and hare populations increased by leaps and bounds too. The extra farm habitat, plus additions such as beetle banks and winter bird seed mixes, was also key to an ever-more successful small family shoot, providing a great environment for their released redlegs.

Speaking to Ian Smith recently I asked him what winning a Purdey Award meant. "At the time it was an enormous morale boost after a very tough period, and the certificate is still on display in pride of place in the dining room," he replied. "It also gave us confidence in our conservation efforts, which still continue today. With ever-growing pressure from protected predators, the greys have gone full circle but we still have lots of farmland birds such as corn buntings and tree sparrows. The pollinators are a joy too, from bumble bees to small blue butterflies that recolonised after we planted kidney vetch for them."