Why the Great Yorkshire Show is the ideal platform for the guardians of the countryside to highlight what they do

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This article was first published in Shooting Times magazine.

For the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation, the Great Yorkshire Show presents a fantastic platform from which we can demonstrate the positives of gamekeeping and estate management to the wider public. With 140,000 people attending the show over four days, it is a great stage to use for educational purposes.

Our stand at the show sits above the ‘Countryside Arena’, and is essentially a walk through of the UK uplands. We immerse our visitors in the moorland landscape, explaining to them why that landscape is the way it is. The purple-clad heather hills are there solely because of the land management that has happened over the past couple of centuries, and it is a landscape where curlew, golden plover, lapwing and oystercatchers thrive. A world where heather moorland is rarer than the rainforest.

A big part of the stand is Tori Goodall, from Walworth Birds of Prey. As well as having her birds on the stand, she chatted to people about them; why raptors thrive on managed moors, and how the work of gamekeepers enables that. She also gave a talk in the Countryside Arena twice a day in which, as well as flying her birds, she discusses why an increase in bird of prey numbers isn’t necessarily good news for all our native birds of prey.

The Gamekeepers’ Welfare Trust also have an area on our stand to champion the positive impact that shooting sports have on mental health and well-being, while supporting our rural heritage and traditions.

Throughout the NGO stand there are interactive scenes showing how positive moorland management creates habitats for many red- and amber-listed species. We also demonstrate how controlling fuel load is a huge factor in reducing the number of wildfires that blight land managed by ‘conservation organisations’ every year. Curlew and other listed species are an important focus, and the work of gamekeepers is providing safe habitats where these birds can thrive.

Predator and pest species control is also vital if we want to achieve positive biodiversity outcomes. We have on display a humane cable restraint as well as an ‘old fashioned’ snare, so people can compare the two and see for themselves how the new style works.

Another display on the stand highlights how land that isn’t managed can all too quickly turn into an area that are in danger of wildfires, fly tipping, wild camping, illegal off-roading, and other antisocial behaviour.

We also have a children’s area run by one of the regional moorland groups, where youngsters can dissect owl pellets, go on a ‘countryside code’ trail around the stand, do some colouring in or learn how to build an owl box.

In the cooking area, children can pluck a pigeon themselves and then taste the finished product after it has been cooked for them by Chris Green, the Cornish Countryman, who also has a show in the arena. In one he talks about wildfowling, and in the other pigeon flighting.

The pigeon plucking and tasting highlights the positive benefits of locally sourced game meat. This is reinforced by Ox Close Fine Foods, which has an area on the stand from which it offers a range of game pies and sausage rolls.

Shooting Times contributor Simon Whitehead is also on our stand to talk about ferreting and demonstrate how easy it is to make rabbit burgers.

Everything on the stand exists to highlight the fact that gamekeepers are the largest group of privately funded conservationist in the UK. Without them, who is going to do this and who is going to pay for the work?

The best people to pass on this message are the gamekeepers themselves. Every day, local upland keepers help to host the NGO stand, having given up their time to talk to the public about the work they do and how they do it. For us, their presence is non-negotiable, as they are the.most important people on our stand. There is simply no one better placed to explain to the public the ins and outs of moorland management.

John Clarke is the NGO director for conservation, policy and uplands, and a former keeper in the Forest of Bowland.