PARTRIDGE

Make a difference for a brighter future by taking part in our farmer and hunter online survey

16 March 2021 - Published by Francis Buner
Across Europe, modern farming practises are causing significant declines among fauna and flora, arguably best documented for farmland birds. Our flagship species the grey partridge for example, declined by a staggering 94% since the early 1980s. Sadly, this makes it the fastest disappearing farmland bird of all.

But why is this happening and what can we do to reverse this ongoing decline? The Interreg North Sea Region (NSR) PARTRIDGE project, a transnational co-operation among 12 partner organisations working with almost 100 farmers and hunters, is demonstrating how to increase biodiversity by 30% by implementing over 7% of high-quality habitat measures on ten 500-ha demonstration sites.

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Sowing of a PARTRIDGE flower block

 

To further our understanding of how arable Agri-environmental Schemes (AES) may be improved to bring about farmland wildlife recovery across all NSR nations, we launched an online survey that is gathering the opinions of farmers, land managers and hunters on a range of topics, which were identified during in-depth key stakeholder interviews in all our partner countries (Scotland, England, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany). The multiple-choice survey explores opinions on measures and management options available, payment rates, control, current advice, flexibility, future requirements, etc.

The key aim is to use the results of the survey to help improve future Agri-environment Schemes by feeding the information directly to policy makers and influencers across our partner countries including Denmark. For this reason, our survey is available in six languages.

The survey will be running until the 1st of May 2021 aiming at 1,000 responses per participating country. That could mean over 6000 survey forms!

And, the more responses we get, the more robust and therefore relevant our findings will be to policy makers and influencers across the North Sea Region.

Therefore, please take the survey now and don’t forget to enter our raffle to win one of three attractive prizes: https://northsearegion.eu/partridge/ 

 

Thank you!

undefined    1st Prize – 1 bag of PARTRIDGE flower mix seeds (plants 1ha) + a Farming with Nature book + an exclusive partridge pin

undefined    2nd and 3rd Prize – A Farming with Nature book + an exclusive partridge pin

undefined    Optional bonus: All three winners will receive tailored habitat management advice from one of our colleagues in the associated country.

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  Picture of the 2nd & 3rd place raffle prize

 

Written by Ellie Raynor, England PARTRIDGE placement student. Edited by Dr Francis Buner, Senior conservation scientist at the GWCT and Head of the PARTRIDGE project.