NGO Invited to Welsh Government Wildlife Summit

More News

The NGO was invited by Welsh Government to attend an urgently convened summit, at last week's Royal Welsh Show, to address the problems facing wildlife that had been highlighted in the recent State of Nature report.

At the meeting, the Minister for Natural Resources and Food, Alun Davies, said that Welsh Government was keen to respond in a positive and proactive way and called for organisations to come together to develop effective wildlife legislation. The minister said that this was the beginning of a "hard debate" and that all involved must work together to make policy.

A spokesman for the National Gamekeepers' Organisation in Wales told the meeting: "The Minister stressed that this was a new dawn for wildlife conservation in Wales. Much has been made of the importance of collaboration ,between partners in ,developing effective conservation policy. The NGO welcomes this and looks forward to working closely with Welsh Government, the statutory agencies and other conservation bodies in achieving it.

"Gamekeepered shoots in Wales are wildlife honeypots and the more widespread adoption of the proven twin-track approach of habitat ,management ,coupled with predator ,control would be crucial in boosting numbers of declining farmland birds and upland breeding waders." ,

He added: "The facts speak for ,themselves. One of the very fewconservation success stories reported in ,State of Nature Wales, the Black Grouse Recovery Project, was actually the result of the work of a single team of gamekeepers in the area around Ruabon, who in 2013 produced ,85% of the lekking black cock in this pan-Wales, multi-agency project.

"The very same keepers have also generated the lion's ,share ,of the black grouse in past years. Indeed, the flagship project would not have succeeded in its aims without their efforts. The NGO said that there is often no mystery in how to go about boosting numbers of many wildlife species, in fact, the knowhow of gamekeepers often leads the way and the NGO will be delighted to engage ,in the process of sharing its ,expertise ,with other conservationists."

Following the Wildlife Summit, the NGO was invited by the National Assembly of Wales to respond to the just-launched inquiry into Sustainable Land Management.