Achieving our conservation targets requires gamekeepers

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With Sir David Attenborough’s latest BBC series, Wild Isles, focusing on the UK and the nature and wildlife that exists on these islands, the health of Britain's nature and biodiversity has come under new scrutiny in the last few weeks. 

In the series, which was co-produced with the RSPB and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Sir David states that “Britain as a whole is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world…Never has there been a more important time to invest in our own wildlife... To try and set an example for the rest of the world and restore our once wild isles for future generations."  

Restoring Britain’s biodiversity and encouraging wildlife is something that the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation supports entirely and – as was highlighted at the Marsden’s Conservation Awards last week – many gamekeepers and land managers all over the UK are doing a fantastic job at improving biodiversity and conserving nature. 

Using the Wild Isles series as their springboard, the National Trust, RSPB and WWF – three of the UK’s largest conservation charities – have launched the ‘Save Our Wild Isles’ campaign, urging the public to make space for nature, and encouraging everyone: the public, communities, businesses and our leaders, to work together to aid the UK’s nature recovery. 

The government have stated that their own targets are to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, and to halt species decline by 2030. In order to achieve these admirable targets, it is vital that they work together with gamekeepers and land managers who, in the vast majority of cases, are already working in this direction.  

A 2020 report undertaken by the NGO and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, and analysed by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, indicated that the 1,000 gamekeepers responding to the survey manage more than 4 million acres of land across England, Scotland and Wales. This equates to about 65% of sites designated for conservation such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) or Special Protection Areas (SPAs). 

Gamekeepers are Britain’s largest privately-funded group of conservationists, and the NGO would urge the government to bear this in mind when looking to achieve their targets. Many conservation charities do good work and have admirable aims, however in the vast majority of cases it is the people working on the ground who have the ability to turn these aims into reality.