August 15, 2025 • 41 mins
Farmer Clusters have been referenced more times than we can count in the last 38 episodes so we went straight to the source and arranged a conversation with Megan Lock and Lizzie Grayshon from GWCT who facilitate Farmer Clusters, work with waders, monitor wildlife and offer advice to farmers across the UK.
Richard Negus takes the helm for this interview and the three discuss Wild Quail, the problems facing our breeding waders, how the government could help, mapping hedgerow habitat and more.
This episode was recorded behind the GWCT stand at The Game Fair with a backdrop of rented van, low hum of generator and a spaniel who would rather be retrieving.
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
Send us photos of your interesting trinkets that your other half wants to burn or bin as submissions to the calendar or for fun at: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Links
- GWCT on Instagram and X
- Farmer Clusters website
- Martin Down Farmer Cluster on X
- Megan on Instagram and X
- Subscribe on Patreon for extra content (you can cancel at any time)
- If you enjoy what we do, consider a one-off tip on Ko-fi
- CountrySlide website
- Negus' book tour dates can be found here
The Hosts
Richard Negus website
Callum McInerney-Riley website
Richard Prideaux website
Edited and Produced by Amy Green for Rural and Outdoor.
Richard Negus takes the helm for this interview and the three discuss Wild Quail, the problems facing our breeding waders, how the government could help, mapping hedgerow habitat and more.
This episode was recorded behind the GWCT stand at The Game Fair with a backdrop of rented van, low hum of generator and a spaniel who would rather be retrieving.
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
Send us photos of your interesting trinkets that your other half wants to burn or bin as submissions to the calendar or for fun at: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Links
- GWCT on Instagram and X
- Farmer Clusters website
- Martin Down Farmer Cluster on X
- Megan on Instagram and X
- Subscribe on Patreon for extra content (you can cancel at any time)
- If you enjoy what we do, consider a one-off tip on Ko-fi
- CountrySlide website
- Negus' book tour dates can be found here
The Hosts
Richard Negus website
Callum McInerney-Riley website
Richard Prideaux website
Edited and Produced by Amy Green for Rural and Outdoor.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am sat in the salubrious and I do mean
salubrious surroundings of the back of a tent. There's a
my view as it stands at the moment, is an
enterprise renta van filled with arbecue goods. And this is
the really, truly the behind the scenes of the Game Fair,
(00:20):
and rather wonderfully, rather than just sort of listening to
me and Richard and Callum whiffle away, We've decided to
take the opportunity, because we are here at the Game Fair,
to go and talk to some of the people who
we think you're going to want to hear. And most
importantly today I'm speaking to the wonderful Meg and the
(00:41):
wonderful Lizzy from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, which
more observant listeners may have noticed that I do rather
wax lyrically about not Megan and Lizzy. I'm obviously talking
about the GWCIT, although to be fair, it would be
very easy to wax lyrically about them. So Lizzie, tell
(01:03):
me what is your role with the Trust and what
do you do?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So I'm an ecologist within the Wetlands Department, and I
also have a slight advisory role where I run one
of our farmer clusters as well.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Cool Megan, what is it that you actually do?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
So, I'm the Farming Biodiversity Advisor within the Advisory Team,
and my main role is facilitating two of the three
farmer clusters within the Martindown Farmer Supercluster, so the Allenford
and the Martindown Farmer Cluster. And I also have a
work with land managers, farmers gamekeepers as advisory clients where
(01:44):
I go to their farms and the states and advise
them on the ground what they should be doing.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Okay, So now I'm very closely allied with the High
Suffolk Farm Cluster and we are funded in rather bizarre
ways largely through private funding courtesy of LENS and therefore
(02:09):
nesle to give us a lot of support. Megan, Can
you tell me and explain as to how you know
you've got them historically the oldest and the largest cluster
groups on these How do you pay the bills? Wow?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
That is a very interesting question. So the farmer clauster
concept came from GWCT and it came from the Marlbordown's
Nature Improvement Area and when that was started then five
farmer classes were established and one of those was the
Allen for Farmer Cluster and that is one of the
first founding ones, which is one of mine. That's seven
(02:45):
and a half thousand hectares, and the other one is
Martin Down and that's five and a half thousand hectares.
And when they were formed, the farmers came together, they
decided that they didn't want to go through country sized
judiship facilitation funding. They wanted it to be truly bottom up.
So they made the decisions of what they're going to
do and how they're going to do it. So they
(03:06):
make a contribution based on their hectorage of two pound
per hector, which covers some of my time. I do
all of them monitoring, surveying and data analysis, events training.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
But we also.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
As GWCT, have a char I have a charitable trust.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Owner who specifically gives money to my role to ford
the Farmer Custer work. And then I find pots of
money here, there and everywhere where. I can gather in
money from FIPPLE or other places, but no private funding
as of yet.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Okay, so Lizzie, how is your talk to me about
your cluster and how that is funded and why it
needs additional funding. I suppose yep.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
So my farmer cluster is the Avon Valley Farmer Cluster.
We run all it out all the way down with
Hampshire Avon from kind of Salisbury down to Bournemouth almost
there's a few gaps along the way and we are
funded through Countryside Stewardship Facilitation funding, so it is the
sort of more formal way of getting that funding. And
(04:12):
that funding pays for my time to organize events and
run courses and bring in different experts. But it's quite
limited that funding. It's very much only one to many.
It only funds the training and the meetings and my
time to organize that. It doesn't actually fund any monitoring
or any habitat works or anything specific like that. So
we then a bit like Meghan as well, we need
(04:34):
to bring in different areas of funding to cover specific projects.
And if we actually want to do stuff as opposed
to talking about doing stuff, we have to bring in
different pots of money to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Okay, One of the questions I suppose perhaps people might have, Okay,
what is a farm cluster, Lizzie, and why are they
better than just farmers plowing their own furrow? To pardon
the pun and going and focusing on their own nature
recovery and habitat management, conservation management, on their own farms.
(05:07):
What's the power of the cluster.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So I think there's two kind of main areas of this,
and I think a big part of it is forming
that little community, because farming can be quite isolating and
quite lonely. You'd expect people to see their neighbors all
the time, but actually, you know, sometimes I'll have events
and people haven't seen each other in years. So just
forming that little community can be really really important, and
it sort of creates a bit of a safe space
(05:31):
to talk about things and ask for advice. I try
and do as much as I can of sort of
peer to peer advice rather than me turning up and
telling people what to do. It's like, all your neighbor's
been doing this for a couple of years, why don't
you go see what they've done. And it creates that
little safe space community and a little bit of sort
of what we call lap wing envy as well. Sometimes,
(05:52):
so if someone's got five pairs of lat wing and
they found out, you know, their neighbors got six pairs,
They're like, oh, well, maybe I'll try and get six
pairs next year. And it's that sort of community side
of things I think is really important.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Yeah. The WhatsApp goes nuts, doesn't it?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Do you know? It's one of the things I found
is that, you know, with my line of work, is
that when you get buy in from farmers, and you know,
perhaps before you I started work with them, I'd go
and have conversations and they go, oh, yeah, I've got
little brown jobs in my edges. I do you know
what they are? And then you perhaps might say, perhaps
(06:28):
might go out on the big farm and bird count
and then they suddenly realized they've got x number of
linus and x number of yellow hammers, and that competitive
nature of farmers, you know, how they do look over
the hedge at their neighbors and have a look at
their cross. I've found exactly the self same thing is
that they are so competitive and that I was starting
(06:51):
to get that look at my goldfinches. Then they've got Yeah,
so that actual that sort of reign nighting, that spirit
of competitiveness of one against the other. Do you think, Megan,
that that's actually almost one of the positives then of
a cluster.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I love dropping into the WHATSAP group. So no, I
just heard a quail on so and so's farm, and
then everybody goes out like trying to hear one. And
now we've seem to have quail on every single farm,
which is great, and we've created an app as well,
which then they can pinpoint. Every member's got access to
the app and they can pinpoint on there.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So sorry, you said you've got quail on every farm?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Really, yeah, okay, tell me about that, because you know
I'm quail. I thought we were all great partridge fanatic.
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
These are the only migratory species of game birds and
they come over at this time, well in the spring, but.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
They start cool.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
They cool generally from June to July, and they have
a quite a distinctive call and it says, wet my lips,
wet my lips. So you don't generally see them, but
you hear them. They lie pasture land and you know
they love beetle banks. So I was out doing butterfly
survey last week on one of the farms within the
(08:09):
cluster and heard it. Put it out and then everybody
went out to listen. And it's harvest. There are a
lot of people out and about the moment and they've
heard them.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
So it's been.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Great to get that feedback.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
And that's what then spurs people on because they want
to know why have you got it and I haven't. Then,
and going back to your question about farmer clusters and
what the importance is, it's bigger, better and more joined up.
You know, just to quote Lawton, if you do things
in isolation and that population dies in a small area
on a reserve or within an island, that's it.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
It's gone.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And the beauty of them the Martyrdown Farmer supercluster is
that in the middle is the National Nature Reserve Martin
Down and we have created corridors going out from that
pristine Chalklam Chalkdown and that's never been cultivated and given
habitats and breasting nesting.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Areas of those species.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
They are iconic there on farmland and you can have
farming and nature together.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's the thing to get
is that both are compatible. And I think that's the
biggest challenge. Name obviously, one of the birds that has
been massively impacted by our modern farming practices, of those
in your wetland areas, so talk me through. So Megan's
got quail, what a you're going to go and top
(09:25):
trump her with Lizzie that you've got.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
So our main species are waders, so breeding lapwing and
breeding redshank two fantastic species. You know, lap wings of
brilliant species. You can speak to any farmer about lapwing
and now remember Pewitz, you know, back when they were
kids all through the fields. So that's been a really
really nice one to work with. So we've had quite
a successful lap wing recovery project where we've kind of
(09:50):
doubled our number of breeding lap wing over the last
nearly ten years now and we're now at quite a
stable population, and I think of a lack wing work.
We started to notice how important our redshank were as well,
and they get a little bit forgotten about because they're
not quite as iconic as lack wing, but they're fantastic
birds and those have been doing really well as well.
(10:12):
So one of the things we really do within our cluster,
and I'm sure we do with lots of others, is
we really involve the keepers who were in place on
a number of the estates and make them make a
huge difference to the work especially with any kind of
ground nesting species, because that predator management is hugely important.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
That's very interesting because I wrote a piece for Scribehound
a few weeks ago that was highlighting the research done
at Upper Otterburn and they were looking at their obviously
upland waders species and when they removed the predator control,
I mean it was literally like those species fell off
(10:49):
a cliff. We're talking sort of eighty plus percent. I
think it was for redshank. So that integral role that
the keeper plays is that something that you would concur
down on the aven.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
The place is where we have been able to achieve
weight of recovery, is where there is timely, well placed
specific legal lethal predator management and non lethal as well.
So we will use temporary electric fencing alongside for lethal
control to make sure that we're covering every base. We've
got a whole suite of predators down there, protected and
(11:29):
non protected. So we try and do our best, you know,
to make things work for these species.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
With all of those those species, place is there are
a sort of enemy numbers. Sorry, my dog has suddenly
decided to nearly pull out my cable. You see, this
is the this is what you get when you sit
near X outside a budget rent van. They're the game there.
What's enemy number one for your waders? Would you say?
Or is that just a bit too generalistic.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So there's two key periods there what was actually free
key periods. There's when birds are turning up and setting
up territory. That a period that gets a little bit
forgotten about because the more disturbed they are at that
point there maybe less likely to nest in optimum habitat.
So we advocate for predator control as early as possible,
(12:12):
so there's not foxes around essentially when they're setting up territory,
because they are the main predator at the start of
a nesting season. So while the birds are on eggs,
the main nest predator tends to be foxes.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
That is the main one.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But that does tend to shift when the birds then
hatch and you've got chicks running around, and that tends
to be you tend to see more avian predation at
that stage. So that's where having tip top habitat is
really good and you can create good areas of cover
for chicks.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
At that point, and Lizzie, you've been able to go
and plot the successes and the returns so that you've
got now how many how many years of data have
you got there?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So we have five very good years of data while
we had a big EU life project running alongside of it.
Since then it's a little bit more patchy where we
don't have a funding coming in to do the really
detailed monitoring. But we know that our lack Wing have
gone from about sixty two pairs to about one hundred
and twenty and we're quite stable there, and our red
Shank have gone from about twenty to about thirty five
(13:12):
and again we're quite stable at that. But what's been
really nice is where we do quite detailed chick monitoring,
we know that we've got enough chicks fledging to increase
our population and we start to see chicks coming back
in following years and breeding as well. What we've also
seen from our Redshank, which is really nice, is chicks
going off into other populations locally across Hampshire. So that's
(13:34):
really good movement between those populations, and we know that
we're supporting other other sites, not just our own.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And so I mean that that my shifting off because
one of the things you know, we've won our focus
species for the High Suffolk cluster, there is the gray
partridge and the turtle dove. Now the turtle dove, we
never quite obviously know what's going to happen to them,
because they are migrating and who knows where the heck
they're going to end up. What might happen in their travels.
With our grade partridges we concentrated on there is that
(14:02):
we know where those areas are, and then we have
been able because of the size of the cluster, we've
been able to widen those areas where we know that
they aren't for where they might want to then move
off into. Would you say that's one of the integral
importances of a cluster is the fact that you can
enable population increase because you are putting the same habitats
(14:25):
and the same protection from predators and the same food
sources out where they can go into. It's not that
they get to a certain number, get to a certain
sustainability level, move out, and then they die. That seems
to be the problem. Is that one of the other
killer positives of a cluster.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, that's the idea. So we've got hot spot sites
where our raiders are doing really well, and then we're
trying to join them up and give them more areas
where they can move into. Another great thing about the
cluster as well, it's hard sometimes to motivate someone to
do something for a species that they don't currently have.
But if they can come to a meeting you can
see or the group has X number of redshank, maybe
(15:04):
actually it's worth me giving it a go, because if
they don't know they're right next door, then it's less
likely to put the effort in to get the habitats
right for that species to come in. So and some years,
you know, they don't always nest the same places, so
some years they might not have any lapping on their farm.
But knowing that the population is still doing well, that's
enough to keep that motivation to keep going next year.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Okay, So Meghan, we've been I winge endlessly. Some may
say I would say just justifiably on country Slide about
how the challenges of the current government have not that
they've wanted to change address tweak, decimate, slash cut slash
(15:47):
refocus funding through DEFRA. What are the challenges that you
think are facing not only your own cluster but wider
nature recovery on Farman, what are the the positives that
could possibly come out of it, and what the negatives
of what this government has done.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
It does come across to me that there's a disconnect
between government and those who are managing the countryside. There
seems to be a lack of understanding and appreciation. Funding
being cut last minute, it creates a lot of uncertainty
and trust is lost.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
That is an issue.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
And I've worked with farmers and now manages my whole career, and.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Consistency is key. So if you.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Create something, take it away, are they likely to then
re engage afterwards? And I've got farmers that have never
been in stewardship because they just want to keep away
from it rather do it their own way and know
they or still deliver, but they can manage it how
they wish.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So therefore they've never been in stewardship at all because
they almost foresaw that there would be a government.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
This is back at ear less stage.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah yeah, so never so are they slightly going? I
told you so.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah. But then that particular one then through is hat
in the ring for SFI and managed to get it
in just before I just got it in, So that
was a real win. I just hope that it goes smoothly.
But we're seeing species recovery across the cluster. And going
back to what you're saying, the benefits of the cluster
(17:28):
is that we can connect stewardship across farm boundaries, and
that's what we're doing, mapping it to see where the
opportunities are and then hopefully, you know, when these new
agreements come out, then we can.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Fill the gaps. But I've always said.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
You can't farm greenee if you're in the red.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
No. No. One of my absolute bugbears is that you
can't expect I mean, are we We've got this illegally
binding piece of legislation which is we have got to
halt or government has got to hold BIA diversity decline
by twenty thirty. Now you're showing great results on your cluster,
(18:12):
but move ten miles down the road off your cluster.
Ain't happening, is it? I mean it is twenty twenty.
Is stopping by diversity decline by twenty thirty? Just a
silly pipe dream number. Oh, it's not being recorded, and
how it's recorded I suppose, Yeah, okay, so we don't
even know. I mean, what do you think?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, I think yeah, how it's being recorded. Again within
my funding through my cluster, I don't actually get any
funding from monitoring, so GLO RECT you know, in house
pay for some of it.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I get some.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Grants, some research grants in for some of it. But
it's hard to even record that recovery. But then I
still also get asked for evidence of the recovery to
go alongside, you know, the work that we're doing, and
it's you think, well, I can just about provide that,
but it's it's hard, and then you wonder there might
be other great projects going on that aren't getting any monitoring,
and so actually recording that recovery is really really difficult.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I think that's the joy of my cluss is that
I can go and do the monitorings and track those trends,
and we can say that there's one hundred and twenty
five percent increase of great partridges, there's one hundred and
twenty percent increase of corn buntings, there's fifty eight percent
increase of species diversity of butterflies.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Do you think you're slightly an anomaly here, because you
know you are at the GWCT is a trust, which
a charity which is ostensibly about trying to stop nature
from declining. And we have others, let's name them, the RSPB,
the Wildlife Trust. The narrative that you've spoken to me
(19:52):
is all about positives that we've put these measures in place,
and look, we've achieved these successes. Do you think it's
actually a bit damaging that a lot of the words
and pictures that seem to come from those two organizations,
and I'm not trying to character assassinate here, but is largely.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
This.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Many insects are dead. We haven't got this many species,
we haven't got this. This is declined. This has declined
because their methodology of raising money is trying to go
and pull on heartstrings because of disaster, Whereas what you're
saying is that if we put these measures in place,
we can achieve success. Do you think actually, in a
way that painting that picture Lizzy of all it's always
(20:35):
doom and gloom is actually almost led us to this
position where the labor government have reached its decisions saying, well,
the sfi elms, what a waste of time because everything's dead,
because that's what the RSPB told me. Do you think
that's almost the problem?
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Quite possibly?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I mean I don't think I would have been able
to achieve much of a success we saw Free the
Waders by being completely doom and gloom. I think, you know,
when I hold me, I try and be as realistic
but as positive as I can be, because if I'm
asking someone to be out there as many nights as
they can a week shooting foxes, but then I only
(21:12):
give them doom and gloom, They're not going to keep
doing that. So we need to be positive and we
need to show what can be done. So I spend
quite a bit of time going off to other groups
who are interested in doing way of recovery and talking
about how you can do it, and it's normally received
really well, you know what can be done. So we
do need to be positive because otherwise people will think, well, yeah,
(21:34):
what is the point of even bothering?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
What do you think about that, Megan?
Speaker 3 (21:38):
I think I'm lucky because I've got a couple of
really good farmers that are happy to engage and have
a very open gate policy, so they're happy for me
to bring people on. Come and have a look, Come
and look at this. This is what we've done. We've
made a turtle dove splash and now we've got turtle
doves drinking there every day. So I think you've just
(21:59):
got to show people what we've got and be proud.
But there is a concern then if you show your
deck then you could get restriction.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
You know.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
That's so.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Patrick Barker, who sort of more or less runs are Cluster.
We have a rather loose cabal of us who who
sort of run the high stuff of farm Cluster. But
he came out with the brilliant line thankfully on TV
with Me, where he was saying that until such point
that you can put a cash value on a yellow hammer,
(22:33):
farmers aren't necessarily going to put them top and front
of their priority list. Farming's under great financial pressures, you know.
I mean, we've got announcements all the time that what
was it another Roger said this morning and the briefing
that there was three thousand farms had gone under a
(22:54):
calling or I think it was actually Nick, wasn't it
the boss man? He said, there are three thousand farms
we've got Clearly farm gate prices are falling. We're apparently
going to have each family is going to be spending
two hundred and seventy five pounds a year more on
food next year, but that's not going to be seen
coming into the farmers. How on earth do you too?
(23:18):
Let's ask you first, Megan, how do you keep your
farmers focused on nature when there isn't any money for
nature and when the stuff that they actually grow, the
stuff that feeds us, is getting paid bottom dollar? How
do you keep them motivating?
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Ah, that's a million dollar question.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
It's quite interesting one though, because i'm the national leave
for clusters within GWECT, so I speak like Lizzie does
to other clusters, or go and meet them and say
this is what you could do, this is what we've
done if you want to set one up. And I
got asked last week, so, so what do they get
out of it? Why are they paying two pound a hector?
(24:00):
What financial gain do they get from that? So they
were quite he was quite confused. Why we did it
because there was no monetary value. We can't go back
to the farmers. It's because they actually really care. And
I think that's one thing. I did a talk to
Hampshire and Losological Society and I think it's a general
consensus that farmers are the bad guys.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
They don't care.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
They don't know what they've got, but it's complete opposite.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
And that's what I see. There's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Pride and that they want to do the right thing,
but they need people to show them the direction and to.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Tweak things.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
And then you see the species discovery where we and
Lizzie and I then report back to the farmer, this
is what you've got.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
If you get to the point.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Where that's jewdship's coming out of their agreement, do they
keep it or do they get rid of it put
it back into production.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
I can't answer that for them. That's the choice they're
going to have to make themselves.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
What about you? What do you think? One second? I
need you to sign a book. Yes, this is the
most wanky celebrity thing came. Sorry sorry were you still recording? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Did you write a book?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So what.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Did you write about? It's called Words from the Hedge?
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Is that when you're in Mongolia?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
That's when you know this is the second edition? Hold on?
You see? Now, if I was a really sad sort
of you know, all three type individual, what I would
do is I carry Oh look who is it for?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Ian?
Speaker 1 (25:37):
I A M? I had double D O M two right,
So I mean, there we go. You know, this is
real world scenario. Here the spaniel is trying to go
and mess up the cables and.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Pint in one hand microphone, and the.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Third person ever has bought a book, Isn't that wonderful?
Actually has a complete lie? Have you read my book? Megan?
Speaker 4 (26:02):
I didn't even need written.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
What have you read my book? Not yet?
Speaker 4 (26:06):
I'm going to get a sign copy for this. I
think that's what.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
You don't understand. So you're all doing all this lovely
stuff with you know, your wildlife and going, oh, look,
I've managed to recover this project. I, on the other hand,
make hedges fall over and write books about it, and
you don't. I've got a question. Thank god, I've got
a question.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
A question about hedges.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
You've got a question about okay, idea flip the table.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
So I was doing a butterfly survey last week and
I thought of you as I was walking at one
section one hundred meters one hundred and forty five individual butterflies,
and that's in that part of the transact. There's a
lot of bramble and wild clematus, and I thought, this
is a bloody good hedge. But I don't think you'd
like it very much.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Well, it's funny you say that, because around in about
two three weeks time, I start doing hedo management plans,
Gordie and I I start doing them. And it's back
to your point about data being king, you know, and
that you don't until you look at it and you
assess it properly. I'm not. We're not doing it so
(27:11):
much in the scientific We're doing it from a very
much practical conservation angle. But we do hedero management plans.
So what we'll do is that if you look at
the whole hedro network on a farm or indeed on
a cluster, you can see well what's missing as well,
so when you write that down. So if you've got
a great big bank of bramble and that's the only
(27:31):
bank of bramble on a farm, usually if I just
saw a great bank of bramble that was choking out
a hedge, I'll go to go, oh, copy is that out?
Because it will come back anyway. But if it is
on four sides of a film, or it's you know
how many angles a head you got around the film,
if that is that only one bit in there which
is a wash with bramble, and it's got some clematus
(27:55):
and it's got all the stuff that we'd use, so
that's just choking that Or that tree has got a
great big load of ivy on it, we can then
by looking at it and say we'll leave that alone,
because we're doing hedgerow management for improving biodiversity. And so therefore,
only by looking at the hedgerow network as a whole
(28:19):
can you say, well, actually that deserves to stay. That
needs to stay there. Because and that's also when we
look around, we're not just looking at hedgerows. We're looking
at species. We might see, let's think we're seeing turtle
doves by h we're seeing feeding out. Great, there's a
fledged brood there. We might think, well why is that?
(28:40):
Then you look around you and you see you've got
that scratchy almost belt of trees with a load of
crap underneath it, and you think, well, that's the reason why,
because that's what they want. And I use a term
called a mosaic of hedges, and that is enabled to
maintain a mosaic by doing management planning. So you guys
(29:04):
are looking at a whole landscape suite Goldie and I
are looking largely at the hedgerow and its immediate margin.
So therefore you're quite right. If it was in isolation
and someone said I want to get that hedgerow back
to being a hedgerow, I'd probably say, well, flail the
Bejesus out of all that old invasive crap. But if
(29:28):
it was the only bit around the field, I'd leave
it well alone, which is not very good for our
bank balance because we don't get paid for leaving stuff alone,
but it's would be the right thing to do as
being hedge layers who are conservationists or are we conservationists
who are hedge layers? I don't know. I mean, what
(29:49):
do you see yourself as? Is your job, your job title?
Your name? Badge says ecologist, right, what does an ecologist mean?
What do you actually think your job is? If you're
going to say somewhat, why I really do, what's what's
your job? What's your job about? So very varied?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So I am an ecologist in the sense that I
do a lot of very detailed survey work. I do
a lot of very targeted tagging work. That's a big
part of my job, trying to investigate exactly where birds
go and why they use certain habitats. But I think
almost for a more important part of it is how
I then communicate it to people and people who can
(30:29):
do something about it. So all of a tagging work
I do directly, you know, goes into the conservation of
that species and to the people who can do something.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
About that species.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
So I don't know if that really answers the question.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Well, no, it does. I mean, I know, Megan, your
job a lot. You've got a lot of communicating, isn't
It is a huge amount of your your role. And
I mean I'm a bloke, right and I'm also fairly
verb blose, you know, I'm not a shrinking violet. Have
(31:02):
you had to train yourself to be slightly the effervescent?
Come on, we're going to go in over the top lads.
You know you've got swagger stick. If you were around
in nineteen fifteen, you'd have been leading people over the
top to their death. Is that something you've had to
almost train yourself to do?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I think you do.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
And it's like I see it as a challenge, I think.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
And also I've always worked in this sector, you know,
and you kind of have to prove yourself before you
get them on board and then when you've got them,
you got them. And I love creating like that community.
Like Lizzie was saying, is I know I can go
into every farmhouse and have a cup of tea.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I know their.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Children, I know their grandchildren or you know who's working,
what's happening, and you know, it's building.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
That relationship that I really enjoy.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I do spend a lot of time on my mine,
walking the fields and doing lots of surveys bunglebees, corn,
bunting's gray part. You know, it's a lot, but it's
also then feeding that back and then encouraging them to
do more.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
If you were able Lizzie to go and have the
ear of Steve Reid def Riam Minister and said listen mate,
this is what we need and this is how you
can come out smelling of roses. What would you say doing.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
That's quite a big question. We need to listen to
people more so. I know we talk about bottom up,
but it's not necessarily giving all the power to it,
but it's it's listening to people and what they're interested in,
what they're motivated by, and how they want to go
about doing it. We need more flexibility, there needs to be. Yeah,
(32:59):
there needs to be some sort of targets and target
areas and those kind of things, but it needs to
be flexible with on the ground, Like what you were
saying with the hedges. You know, prescriptively you would take
all of that out, but actually once you get there
and you speak to someone, you would probably leave it in.
So we need to have that flexibility and trust for
people who are managing these sites to know what they're
(33:21):
doing and do the right thing. I realize getting to
that point is quite difficult, but at the end of
the day that that is how you can actually achieve stuff.
And once people take that ownership, they then keep running
with it and they'll do more and more if they're
given a chance to go with it.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
What would you say to him, Megan, rather than put
your fist up, come with me, Come with me, and
what would you show.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
And have a look? Come and me with some farmers.
This is a farm.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Because he hasn't been great actually visiting farmers as he
I mean, so if you were to show him of
how stuff can work that you go from we started
off from this load point and we're now arrived at
this high point. What would be your one thing you'd say,
I love this, go and have a look at this
and see what how how we've worked it. What would
(34:14):
be your one little thing you'd taken.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
A project that we've done. Yeah, God, there's so many.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Though, Yeah, but if you've got a favorite, See, I've
got hedges that I will show to MP's journalists and whatnot. Say,
look start off looking like that, and now look at that,
and we've got this many linits netting in this many
yell hambs. What's that one little thing that's your golden
nugget that you could go and you've given You've got
almost an elevator pitch to the Secretary of State for DEPHRA.
(34:44):
What would you go and show it?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Well, where we've taken land out production to put in
turtle dove scrapes little we call them splashes, with cultivated
areas around it for ourble plants, and then a nice
pollen and nectar that goes up.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
And so this could be.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Wall to wall wheek, but it's not because they've decided
that this is more important to them. And we are
the most westerly range of turtle doves, so we're hanging
on and we are now twenty two of these water
sources across the cluster and it's vital for them. So
it's connecting that up and it is showing that farmers
(35:21):
can do this. Collectively, we've got twenty nine they're all
connected from Salisbury to Cranbourne to Fordingbridge.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Okay, so what you're going to show, So you've got something,
Lizzie that's done under either kinder side Stewardship or SFI
that you're going to go and show Steve Reid say, look,
this is efficacious, this works, This still needs to continue
your support. What would be something that you were going
to show them from your neck of the woods.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
So I struggle to get away from breathing waders. We
have lots of other projects as well, but I focus
on that one because well for a number of reasons,
but the's so such iconic species it's really lovely to
focus on them. So one of the things we've been
able to do over the last few years is sort
of top up what people are getting through their countryside stewardship.
(36:13):
So there's a lovely breeding way to option through countryside stewardship.
Really it's fairly well paid and it's relatively easy to do.
But in order to make it really successful. There's a
couple of add ons you can do, and they're quite simple.
So I think what I'd like to highlight is how
that specific advice but you can give on top of
(36:34):
those options can be absolutely critical to making it work.
So all of these options are in place before the
project started, and what really made them work was just
that extra tweak of advice on top of it. If
you put an extra ditch through here, on extra scrape there,
or you maybe left this a bit longer, or if
you can target your predator management in this area, and
(36:56):
that's what really made them work. I mean, I think
you get so much more from your for those options
as well. So yeah, so that's what I would show,
is what can be done and what can be done
on top of it.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Cool, right, Well, I think we're going to wrap up,
but I've got the final question to you both. So
here we are at the game fair under the blazing sun.
If you were going to go and advise someone coming here,
what's the three things Megan that you're going to go
and say? You've got to go and see that other
(37:27):
obviously than the GWCT stand and buy a book by
some hedges? What would be the three things that you
are going to in your brief time off here where
you going to go and see?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
First, come to GWCT and sign up as a member,
right you can't. Data is key and this is the
only way we're going to get it, So come and support.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Us, Come and have a drink and have a chat,
get some advice. What else?
Speaker 3 (37:52):
The thing is every game fair? I don't get very far,
So this is the issue.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I think.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Just make the most of networking and talking to other people.
I think sharing ideas and knowledge is really important.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
And just seeing some of your buddies from our college.
That's like my highlight.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
It's going to see some old friends that I was
at college when I was sixteen and we never get
time to see each other. And what else could you do?
Speaker 1 (38:16):
That's my top ten? You're going to go and do
any You're going to do any retail therapy, Lizzie.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Ah, Yeah, probably try and stay away, but I expect
so maybe on Sunday when the sales.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Well, exactly, yes, let's be perfect. You're going to retail
for they I've already told my son that he's got
to get he's only allowed to even get his wallet
out on Sunday, and he then came back with one
of those stupid collars. My dogs never wear collars. He
bought a collar for the dog in one of those
polo belts and he doesn't even fit in, and so
he's paid top dollar for it as well.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Anyway, Oh, when he's working trousers, that's what we need.
We need some decent working trousers, decent kit that fit
a woman.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
You wrote a fantastic article in the Shooting Times about
it for women, and that was an interesting thing. You see,
I could have if I was a hackneyed journalist, I
could have been asking about do you find it really
difficult to work amongst all these men as women? But
clearly not no, because no, because at the end of
the day, we know that evidence, you know, speaks for itself,
(39:19):
and I think that. But one of the things that
I do see, and it was very just reading your
article about it, and when you sort of said, is
there any way I can speak to the editor of
the Shooting Times about, you know, kit for women? It
was something that just really doesn't fit on our radar.
So that weird thing of the sort of you know,
how challenging is it for women? To work in farming
(39:39):
and nature recovery and all that stuff is not at
all because we can see but you can't actually buy
any kit to go and work in. It's a bit
more fundamentals.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
I was taught at SPAJA.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
There's no such thing as bad where they're just inadequate clothing.
And sixty percent of GWCT is female field staff and advisory,
so we do need some good stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Now listen, I'm going to put this out there because
we are at the end of the day Britain's premiere
and I mean that quite sincerely, Rural podcast. I mean,
that's that's data. That is that's actually drawn from data,
that's not just my supposition. And if anyone's listening, which
they will be from the perhaps think about having a
(40:23):
chat with the women of the GWCT to go and
say what do we actually need in the field. And
then what a fantastic relationship that would be because you
say sixty percent of your field force a female, maybe
sixty percent. There you go. So that's it, And what
a thing to end on talking about ladies trousers. So
you know, that's great. That's all of shit we like
(40:45):
to do. Well, thank you so much. Lizzie. Thank you Meghan.
It has been loved to talk for you and I
told you, Meghan, i'd treat you gently. Have you been
gently treated? Very?
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Yeah, And it's a great podcast. I listen to it
every week.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Thank you by my book, I want to free one.
I am sat in the salubrious and I do mean
salubrious surroundings of the back of a tent. There's a
my view as it stands at the moment, is an
enterprise renta van filled with arbecue goods. And this is
the really, truly the behind the scenes of the Game Fair,
(00:20):
and rather wonderfully, rather than just sort of listening to
me and Richard and Callum whiffle away, We've decided to
take the opportunity, because we are here at the Game Fair,
to go and talk to some of the people who
we think you're going to want to hear. And most
importantly today I'm speaking to the wonderful Meg and the
(00:41):
wonderful Lizzy from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, which
more observant listeners may have noticed that I do rather
wax lyrically about not Megan and Lizzy. I'm obviously talking
about the GWCIT, although to be fair, it would be
very easy to wax lyrically about them. So Lizzie, tell
(01:03):
me what is your role with the Trust and what
do you do?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So I'm an ecologist within the Wetlands Department, and I
also have a slight advisory role where I run one
of our farmer clusters as well.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Cool Megan, what is it that you actually do?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
So, I'm the Farming Biodiversity Advisor within the Advisory Team,
and my main role is facilitating two of the three
farmer clusters within the Martindown Farmer Supercluster, so the Allenford
and the Martindown Farmer Cluster. And I also have a
work with land managers, farmers gamekeepers as advisory clients where
(01:44):
I go to their farms and the states and advise
them on the ground what they should be doing.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Okay, So now I'm very closely allied with the High
Suffolk Farm Cluster and we are funded in rather bizarre
ways largely through private funding courtesy of LENS and therefore
(02:09):
nesle to give us a lot of support. Megan, Can
you tell me and explain as to how you know
you've got them historically the oldest and the largest cluster
groups on these How do you pay the bills? Wow?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
That is a very interesting question. So the farmer clauster
concept came from GWCT and it came from the Marlbordown's
Nature Improvement Area and when that was started then five
farmer classes were established and one of those was the
Allen for Farmer Cluster and that is one of the
first founding ones, which is one of mine. That's seven
(02:45):
and a half thousand hectares, and the other one is
Martin Down and that's five and a half thousand hectares.
And when they were formed, the farmers came together, they
decided that they didn't want to go through country sized
judiship facilitation funding. They wanted it to be truly bottom up.
So they made the decisions of what they're going to
do and how they're going to do it. So they
(03:06):
make a contribution based on their hectorage of two pound
per hector, which covers some of my time. I do
all of them monitoring, surveying and data analysis, events training.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
But we also.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
As GWCT, have a char I have a charitable trust.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Owner who specifically gives money to my role to ford
the Farmer Custer work. And then I find pots of
money here, there and everywhere where. I can gather in
money from FIPPLE or other places, but no private funding
as of yet.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Okay, so Lizzie, how is your talk to me about
your cluster and how that is funded and why it
needs additional funding. I suppose yep.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
So my farmer cluster is the Avon Valley Farmer Cluster.
We run all it out all the way down with
Hampshire Avon from kind of Salisbury down to Bournemouth almost
there's a few gaps along the way and we are
funded through Countryside Stewardship Facilitation funding, so it is the
sort of more formal way of getting that funding. And
(04:12):
that funding pays for my time to organize events and
run courses and bring in different experts. But it's quite
limited that funding. It's very much only one to many.
It only funds the training and the meetings and my
time to organize that. It doesn't actually fund any monitoring
or any habitat works or anything specific like that. So
we then a bit like Meghan as well, we need
(04:34):
to bring in different areas of funding to cover specific projects.
And if we actually want to do stuff as opposed
to talking about doing stuff, we have to bring in
different pots of money to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Okay, One of the questions I suppose perhaps people might have, Okay,
what is a farm cluster, Lizzie, and why are they
better than just farmers plowing their own furrow? To pardon
the pun and going and focusing on their own nature
recovery and habitat management, conservation management, on their own farms.
(05:07):
What's the power of the cluster.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So I think there's two kind of main areas of this,
and I think a big part of it is forming
that little community, because farming can be quite isolating and
quite lonely. You'd expect people to see their neighbors all
the time, but actually, you know, sometimes I'll have events
and people haven't seen each other in years. So just
forming that little community can be really really important, and
it sort of creates a bit of a safe space
(05:31):
to talk about things and ask for advice. I try
and do as much as I can of sort of
peer to peer advice rather than me turning up and
telling people what to do. It's like, all your neighbor's
been doing this for a couple of years, why don't
you go see what they've done. And it creates that
little safe space community and a little bit of sort
of what we call lap wing envy as well. Sometimes,
(05:52):
so if someone's got five pairs of lat wing and
they found out, you know, their neighbors got six pairs,
They're like, oh, well, maybe I'll try and get six
pairs next year. And it's that sort of community side
of things I think is really important.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Yeah. The WhatsApp goes nuts, doesn't it?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Do you know? It's one of the things I found
is that, you know, with my line of work, is
that when you get buy in from farmers, and you know,
perhaps before you I started work with them, I'd go
and have conversations and they go, oh, yeah, I've got
little brown jobs in my edges. I do you know
what they are? And then you perhaps might say, perhaps
(06:28):
might go out on the big farm and bird count
and then they suddenly realized they've got x number of
linus and x number of yellow hammers, and that competitive
nature of farmers, you know, how they do look over
the hedge at their neighbors and have a look at
their cross. I've found exactly the self same thing is
that they are so competitive and that I was starting
(06:51):
to get that look at my goldfinches. Then they've got Yeah,
so that actual that sort of reign nighting, that spirit
of competitiveness of one against the other. Do you think, Megan,
that that's actually almost one of the positives then of
a cluster.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
I love dropping into the WHATSAP group. So no, I
just heard a quail on so and so's farm, and
then everybody goes out like trying to hear one. And
now we've seem to have quail on every single farm,
which is great, and we've created an app as well,
which then they can pinpoint. Every member's got access to
the app and they can pinpoint on there.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So sorry, you said you've got quail on every farm?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Really, yeah, okay, tell me about that, because you know
I'm quail. I thought we were all great partridge fanatic.
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
These are the only migratory species of game birds and
they come over at this time, well in the spring, but.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
They start cool.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
They cool generally from June to July, and they have
a quite a distinctive call and it says, wet my lips,
wet my lips. So you don't generally see them, but
you hear them. They lie pasture land and you know
they love beetle banks. So I was out doing butterfly
survey last week on one of the farms within the
(08:09):
cluster and heard it. Put it out and then everybody
went out to listen. And it's harvest. There are a
lot of people out and about the moment and they've
heard them.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
So it's been.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Great to get that feedback.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
And that's what then spurs people on because they want
to know why have you got it and I haven't. Then,
and going back to your question about farmer clusters and
what the importance is, it's bigger, better and more joined up.
You know, just to quote Lawton, if you do things
in isolation and that population dies in a small area
on a reserve or within an island, that's it.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
It's gone.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And the beauty of them the Martyrdown Farmer supercluster is
that in the middle is the National Nature Reserve Martin
Down and we have created corridors going out from that
pristine Chalklam Chalkdown and that's never been cultivated and given
habitats and breasting nesting.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Areas of those species.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
They are iconic there on farmland and you can have
farming and nature together.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's the thing to get
is that both are compatible. And I think that's the
biggest challenge. Name obviously, one of the birds that has
been massively impacted by our modern farming practices, of those
in your wetland areas, so talk me through. So Megan's
got quail, what a you're going to go and top
(09:25):
trump her with Lizzie that you've got.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
So our main species are waders, so breeding lapwing and
breeding redshank two fantastic species. You know, lap wings of
brilliant species. You can speak to any farmer about lapwing
and now remember Pewitz, you know, back when they were
kids all through the fields. So that's been a really
really nice one to work with. So we've had quite
a successful lap wing recovery project where we've kind of
(09:50):
doubled our number of breeding lap wing over the last
nearly ten years now and we're now at quite a
stable population, and I think of a lack wing work.
We started to notice how important our redshank were as well,
and they get a little bit forgotten about because they're
not quite as iconic as lack wing, but they're fantastic
birds and those have been doing really well as well.
(10:12):
So one of the things we really do within our cluster,
and I'm sure we do with lots of others, is
we really involve the keepers who were in place on
a number of the estates and make them make a
huge difference to the work especially with any kind of
ground nesting species, because that predator management is hugely important.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
That's very interesting because I wrote a piece for Scribehound
a few weeks ago that was highlighting the research done
at Upper Otterburn and they were looking at their obviously
upland waders species and when they removed the predator control,
I mean it was literally like those species fell off
(10:49):
a cliff. We're talking sort of eighty plus percent. I
think it was for redshank. So that integral role that
the keeper plays is that something that you would concur
down on the aven.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
The place is where we have been able to achieve
weight of recovery, is where there is timely, well placed
specific legal lethal predator management and non lethal as well.
So we will use temporary electric fencing alongside for lethal
control to make sure that we're covering every base. We've
got a whole suite of predators down there, protected and
(11:29):
non protected. So we try and do our best, you know,
to make things work for these species.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
With all of those those species, place is there are
a sort of enemy numbers. Sorry, my dog has suddenly
decided to nearly pull out my cable. You see, this
is the this is what you get when you sit
near X outside a budget rent van. They're the game there.
What's enemy number one for your waders? Would you say?
Or is that just a bit too generalistic.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So there's two key periods there what was actually free
key periods. There's when birds are turning up and setting
up territory. That a period that gets a little bit
forgotten about because the more disturbed they are at that
point there maybe less likely to nest in optimum habitat.
So we advocate for predator control as early as possible,
(12:12):
so there's not foxes around essentially when they're setting up territory,
because they are the main predator at the start of
a nesting season. So while the birds are on eggs,
the main nest predator tends to be foxes.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
That is the main one.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But that does tend to shift when the birds then
hatch and you've got chicks running around, and that tends
to be you tend to see more avian predation at
that stage. So that's where having tip top habitat is
really good and you can create good areas of cover
for chicks.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
At that point, and Lizzie, you've been able to go
and plot the successes and the returns so that you've
got now how many how many years of data have
you got there?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So we have five very good years of data while
we had a big EU life project running alongside of it.
Since then it's a little bit more patchy where we
don't have a funding coming in to do the really
detailed monitoring. But we know that our lack Wing have
gone from about sixty two pairs to about one hundred
and twenty and we're quite stable there, and our red
Shank have gone from about twenty to about thirty five
(13:12):
and again we're quite stable at that. But what's been
really nice is where we do quite detailed chick monitoring,
we know that we've got enough chicks fledging to increase
our population and we start to see chicks coming back
in following years and breeding as well. What we've also
seen from our Redshank, which is really nice, is chicks
going off into other populations locally across Hampshire. So that's
(13:34):
really good movement between those populations, and we know that
we're supporting other other sites, not just our own.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And so I mean that that my shifting off because
one of the things you know, we've won our focus
species for the High Suffolk cluster, there is the gray
partridge and the turtle dove. Now the turtle dove, we
never quite obviously know what's going to happen to them,
because they are migrating and who knows where the heck
they're going to end up. What might happen in their travels.
With our grade partridges we concentrated on there is that
(14:02):
we know where those areas are, and then we have
been able because of the size of the cluster, we've
been able to widen those areas where we know that
they aren't for where they might want to then move
off into. Would you say that's one of the integral
importances of a cluster is the fact that you can
enable population increase because you are putting the same habitats
(14:25):
and the same protection from predators and the same food
sources out where they can go into. It's not that
they get to a certain number, get to a certain
sustainability level, move out, and then they die. That seems
to be the problem. Is that one of the other
killer positives of a cluster.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, that's the idea. So we've got hot spot sites
where our raiders are doing really well, and then we're
trying to join them up and give them more areas
where they can move into. Another great thing about the
cluster as well, it's hard sometimes to motivate someone to
do something for a species that they don't currently have.
But if they can come to a meeting you can
see or the group has X number of redshank, maybe
(15:04):
actually it's worth me giving it a go, because if
they don't know they're right next door, then it's less
likely to put the effort in to get the habitats
right for that species to come in. So and some years,
you know, they don't always nest the same places, so
some years they might not have any lapping on their farm.
But knowing that the population is still doing well, that's
enough to keep that motivation to keep going next year.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Okay, So Meghan, we've been I winge endlessly. Some may
say I would say just justifiably on country Slide about
how the challenges of the current government have not that
they've wanted to change address tweak, decimate, slash cut slash
(15:47):
refocus funding through DEFRA. What are the challenges that you
think are facing not only your own cluster but wider
nature recovery on Farman, what are the the positives that
could possibly come out of it, and what the negatives
of what this government has done.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
It does come across to me that there's a disconnect
between government and those who are managing the countryside. There
seems to be a lack of understanding and appreciation. Funding
being cut last minute, it creates a lot of uncertainty
and trust is lost.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
That is an issue.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
And I've worked with farmers and now manages my whole career, and.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Consistency is key. So if you.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Create something, take it away, are they likely to then
re engage afterwards? And I've got farmers that have never
been in stewardship because they just want to keep away
from it rather do it their own way and know
they or still deliver, but they can manage it how
they wish.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So therefore they've never been in stewardship at all because
they almost foresaw that there would be a government.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
This is back at ear less stage.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah yeah, so never so are they slightly going? I
told you so.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah. But then that particular one then through is hat
in the ring for SFI and managed to get it
in just before I just got it in, So that
was a real win. I just hope that it goes smoothly.
But we're seeing species recovery across the cluster. And going
back to what you're saying, the benefits of the cluster
(17:28):
is that we can connect stewardship across farm boundaries, and
that's what we're doing, mapping it to see where the
opportunities are and then hopefully, you know, when these new
agreements come out, then we can.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Fill the gaps. But I've always said.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
You can't farm greenee if you're in the red.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
No. No. One of my absolute bugbears is that you
can't expect I mean, are we We've got this illegally
binding piece of legislation which is we have got to
halt or government has got to hold BIA diversity decline
by twenty thirty. Now you're showing great results on your cluster,
(18:12):
but move ten miles down the road off your cluster.
Ain't happening, is it? I mean it is twenty twenty.
Is stopping by diversity decline by twenty thirty? Just a
silly pipe dream number. Oh, it's not being recorded, and
how it's recorded I suppose, Yeah, okay, so we don't
even know. I mean, what do you think?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, I think yeah, how it's being recorded. Again within
my funding through my cluster, I don't actually get any
funding from monitoring, so GLO RECT you know, in house
pay for some of it.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I get some.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Grants, some research grants in for some of it. But
it's hard to even record that recovery. But then I
still also get asked for evidence of the recovery to
go alongside, you know, the work that we're doing, and
it's you think, well, I can just about provide that,
but it's it's hard, and then you wonder there might
be other great projects going on that aren't getting any monitoring,
and so actually recording that recovery is really really difficult.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I think that's the joy of my cluss is that
I can go and do the monitorings and track those trends,
and we can say that there's one hundred and twenty
five percent increase of great partridges, there's one hundred and
twenty percent increase of corn buntings, there's fifty eight percent
increase of species diversity of butterflies.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Do you think you're slightly an anomaly here, because you
know you are at the GWCT is a trust, which
a charity which is ostensibly about trying to stop nature
from declining. And we have others, let's name them, the RSPB,
the Wildlife Trust. The narrative that you've spoken to me
(19:52):
is all about positives that we've put these measures in place,
and look, we've achieved these successes. Do you think it's
actually a bit damaging that a lot of the words
and pictures that seem to come from those two organizations,
and I'm not trying to character assassinate here, but is largely.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
This.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Many insects are dead. We haven't got this many species,
we haven't got this. This is declined. This has declined
because their methodology of raising money is trying to go
and pull on heartstrings because of disaster, Whereas what you're
saying is that if we put these measures in place,
we can achieve success. Do you think actually, in a
way that painting that picture Lizzy of all it's always
(20:35):
doom and gloom is actually almost led us to this
position where the labor government have reached its decisions saying, well,
the sfi elms, what a waste of time because everything's dead,
because that's what the RSPB told me. Do you think
that's almost the problem?
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Quite possibly?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I mean I don't think I would have been able
to achieve much of a success we saw Free the
Waders by being completely doom and gloom. I think, you know,
when I hold me, I try and be as realistic
but as positive as I can be, because if I'm
asking someone to be out there as many nights as
they can a week shooting foxes, but then I only
(21:12):
give them doom and gloom, They're not going to keep
doing that. So we need to be positive and we
need to show what can be done. So I spend
quite a bit of time going off to other groups
who are interested in doing way of recovery and talking
about how you can do it, and it's normally received
really well, you know what can be done. So we
do need to be positive because otherwise people will think, well, yeah,
(21:34):
what is the point of even bothering?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
What do you think about that, Megan?
Speaker 3 (21:38):
I think I'm lucky because I've got a couple of
really good farmers that are happy to engage and have
a very open gate policy, so they're happy for me
to bring people on. Come and have a look, Come
and look at this. This is what we've done. We've
made a turtle dove splash and now we've got turtle
doves drinking there every day. So I think you've just
(21:59):
got to show people what we've got and be proud.
But there is a concern then if you show your
deck then you could get restriction.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
You know.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
That's so.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Patrick Barker, who sort of more or less runs are Cluster.
We have a rather loose cabal of us who who
sort of run the high stuff of farm Cluster. But
he came out with the brilliant line thankfully on TV
with Me, where he was saying that until such point
that you can put a cash value on a yellow hammer,
(22:33):
farmers aren't necessarily going to put them top and front
of their priority list. Farming's under great financial pressures, you know.
I mean, we've got announcements all the time that what
was it another Roger said this morning and the briefing
that there was three thousand farms had gone under a
(22:54):
calling or I think it was actually Nick, wasn't it
the boss man? He said, there are three thousand farms
we've got Clearly farm gate prices are falling. We're apparently
going to have each family is going to be spending
two hundred and seventy five pounds a year more on
food next year, but that's not going to be seen
coming into the farmers. How on earth do you too?
(23:18):
Let's ask you first, Megan, how do you keep your
farmers focused on nature when there isn't any money for
nature and when the stuff that they actually grow, the
stuff that feeds us, is getting paid bottom dollar? How
do you keep them motivating?
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Ah, that's a million dollar question.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
It's quite interesting one though, because i'm the national leave
for clusters within GWECT, so I speak like Lizzie does
to other clusters, or go and meet them and say
this is what you could do, this is what we've
done if you want to set one up. And I
got asked last week, so, so what do they get
out of it? Why are they paying two pound a hector?
(24:00):
What financial gain do they get from that? So they
were quite he was quite confused. Why we did it
because there was no monetary value. We can't go back
to the farmers. It's because they actually really care. And
I think that's one thing. I did a talk to
Hampshire and Losological Society and I think it's a general
consensus that farmers are the bad guys.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
They don't care.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
They don't know what they've got, but it's complete opposite.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
And that's what I see. There's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Pride and that they want to do the right thing,
but they need people to show them the direction and to.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Tweak things.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
And then you see the species discovery where we and
Lizzie and I then report back to the farmer, this
is what you've got.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
If you get to the point.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Where that's jewdship's coming out of their agreement, do they
keep it or do they get rid of it put
it back into production.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
I can't answer that for them. That's the choice they're
going to have to make themselves.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
What about you? What do you think? One second? I
need you to sign a book. Yes, this is the
most wanky celebrity thing came. Sorry sorry were you still recording? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Did you write a book?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So what.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Did you write about? It's called Words from the Hedge?
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Is that when you're in Mongolia?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
That's when you know this is the second edition? Hold on?
You see? Now, if I was a really sad sort
of you know, all three type individual, what I would
do is I carry Oh look who is it for?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Ian?
Speaker 1 (25:37):
I A M? I had double D O M two right,
So I mean, there we go. You know, this is
real world scenario. Here the spaniel is trying to go
and mess up the cables and.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Pint in one hand microphone, and the.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Third person ever has bought a book, Isn't that wonderful?
Actually has a complete lie? Have you read my book? Megan?
Speaker 4 (26:02):
I didn't even need written.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
What have you read my book? Not yet?
Speaker 4 (26:06):
I'm going to get a sign copy for this. I
think that's what.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
You don't understand. So you're all doing all this lovely
stuff with you know, your wildlife and going, oh, look,
I've managed to recover this project. I, on the other hand,
make hedges fall over and write books about it, and
you don't. I've got a question. Thank god, I've got
a question.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
A question about hedges.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
You've got a question about okay, idea flip the table.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
So I was doing a butterfly survey last week and
I thought of you as I was walking at one
section one hundred meters one hundred and forty five individual butterflies,
and that's in that part of the transact. There's a
lot of bramble and wild clematus, and I thought, this
is a bloody good hedge. But I don't think you'd
like it very much.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Well, it's funny you say that, because around in about
two three weeks time, I start doing hedo management plans,
Gordie and I I start doing them. And it's back
to your point about data being king, you know, and
that you don't until you look at it and you
assess it properly. I'm not. We're not doing it so
(27:11):
much in the scientific We're doing it from a very
much practical conservation angle. But we do hedero management plans.
So what we'll do is that if you look at
the whole hedro network on a farm or indeed on
a cluster, you can see well what's missing as well,
so when you write that down. So if you've got
a great big bank of bramble and that's the only
(27:31):
bank of bramble on a farm, usually if I just
saw a great bank of bramble that was choking out
a hedge, I'll go to go, oh, copy is that out?
Because it will come back anyway. But if it is
on four sides of a film, or it's you know
how many angles a head you got around the film,
if that is that only one bit in there which
is a wash with bramble, and it's got some clematus
(27:55):
and it's got all the stuff that we'd use, so
that's just choking that Or that tree has got a
great big load of ivy on it, we can then
by looking at it and say we'll leave that alone,
because we're doing hedgerow management for improving biodiversity. And so therefore,
only by looking at the hedgerow network as a whole
(28:19):
can you say, well, actually that deserves to stay. That
needs to stay there. Because and that's also when we
look around, we're not just looking at hedgerows. We're looking
at species. We might see, let's think we're seeing turtle
doves by h we're seeing feeding out. Great, there's a
fledged brood there. We might think, well why is that?
(28:40):
Then you look around you and you see you've got
that scratchy almost belt of trees with a load of
crap underneath it, and you think, well, that's the reason why,
because that's what they want. And I use a term
called a mosaic of hedges, and that is enabled to
maintain a mosaic by doing management planning. So you guys
(29:04):
are looking at a whole landscape suite Goldie and I
are looking largely at the hedgerow and its immediate margin.
So therefore you're quite right. If it was in isolation
and someone said I want to get that hedgerow back
to being a hedgerow, I'd probably say, well, flail the
Bejesus out of all that old invasive crap. But if
(29:28):
it was the only bit around the field, I'd leave
it well alone, which is not very good for our
bank balance because we don't get paid for leaving stuff alone,
but it's would be the right thing to do as
being hedge layers who are conservationists or are we conservationists
who are hedge layers? I don't know. I mean, what
(29:49):
do you see yourself as? Is your job, your job title?
Your name? Badge says ecologist, right, what does an ecologist mean?
What do you actually think your job is? If you're
going to say somewhat, why I really do, what's what's
your job? What's your job about? So very varied?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So I am an ecologist in the sense that I
do a lot of very detailed survey work. I do
a lot of very targeted tagging work. That's a big
part of my job, trying to investigate exactly where birds
go and why they use certain habitats. But I think
almost for a more important part of it is how
I then communicate it to people and people who can
(30:29):
do something about it. So all of a tagging work
I do directly, you know, goes into the conservation of
that species and to the people who can do something.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
About that species.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
So I don't know if that really answers the question.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Well, no, it does. I mean, I know, Megan, your
job a lot. You've got a lot of communicating, isn't
It is a huge amount of your your role. And
I mean I'm a bloke, right and I'm also fairly
verb blose, you know, I'm not a shrinking violet. Have
(31:02):
you had to train yourself to be slightly the effervescent?
Come on, we're going to go in over the top lads.
You know you've got swagger stick. If you were around
in nineteen fifteen, you'd have been leading people over the
top to their death. Is that something you've had to
almost train yourself to do?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I think you do.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
And it's like I see it as a challenge, I think.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
And also I've always worked in this sector, you know,
and you kind of have to prove yourself before you
get them on board and then when you've got them,
you got them. And I love creating like that community.
Like Lizzie was saying, is I know I can go
into every farmhouse and have a cup of tea.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
I know their.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Children, I know their grandchildren or you know who's working,
what's happening, and you know, it's building.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
That relationship that I really enjoy.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I do spend a lot of time on my mine,
walking the fields and doing lots of surveys bunglebees, corn,
bunting's gray part. You know, it's a lot, but it's
also then feeding that back and then encouraging them to
do more.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
If you were able Lizzie to go and have the
ear of Steve Reid def Riam Minister and said listen mate,
this is what we need and this is how you
can come out smelling of roses. What would you say doing.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
That's quite a big question. We need to listen to
people more so. I know we talk about bottom up,
but it's not necessarily giving all the power to it,
but it's it's listening to people and what they're interested in,
what they're motivated by, and how they want to go
about doing it. We need more flexibility, there needs to be. Yeah,
(32:59):
there needs to be some sort of targets and target
areas and those kind of things, but it needs to
be flexible with on the ground, Like what you were
saying with the hedges. You know, prescriptively you would take
all of that out, but actually once you get there
and you speak to someone, you would probably leave it in.
So we need to have that flexibility and trust for
people who are managing these sites to know what they're
(33:21):
doing and do the right thing. I realize getting to
that point is quite difficult, but at the end of
the day that that is how you can actually achieve stuff.
And once people take that ownership, they then keep running
with it and they'll do more and more if they're
given a chance to go with it.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
What would you say to him, Megan, rather than put
your fist up, come with me, Come with me, and
what would you show.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
And have a look? Come and me with some farmers.
This is a farm.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Because he hasn't been great actually visiting farmers as he
I mean, so if you were to show him of
how stuff can work that you go from we started
off from this load point and we're now arrived at
this high point. What would be your one thing you'd say,
I love this, go and have a look at this
and see what how how we've worked it. What would
(34:14):
be your one little thing you'd taken.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
A project that we've done. Yeah, God, there's so many.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Though, Yeah, but if you've got a favorite, See, I've
got hedges that I will show to MP's journalists and whatnot. Say,
look start off looking like that, and now look at that,
and we've got this many linits netting in this many
yell hambs. What's that one little thing that's your golden
nugget that you could go and you've given You've got
almost an elevator pitch to the Secretary of State for DEPHRA.
(34:44):
What would you go and show it?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Well, where we've taken land out production to put in
turtle dove scrapes little we call them splashes, with cultivated
areas around it for ourble plants, and then a nice
pollen and nectar that goes up.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
And so this could be.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Wall to wall wheek, but it's not because they've decided
that this is more important to them. And we are
the most westerly range of turtle doves, so we're hanging
on and we are now twenty two of these water
sources across the cluster and it's vital for them. So
it's connecting that up and it is showing that farmers
(35:21):
can do this. Collectively, we've got twenty nine they're all
connected from Salisbury to Cranbourne to Fordingbridge.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Okay, so what you're going to show, So you've got something,
Lizzie that's done under either kinder side Stewardship or SFI
that you're going to go and show Steve Reid say, look,
this is efficacious, this works, This still needs to continue
your support. What would be something that you were going
to show them from your neck of the woods.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
So I struggle to get away from breathing waders. We
have lots of other projects as well, but I focus
on that one because well for a number of reasons,
but the's so such iconic species it's really lovely to
focus on them. So one of the things we've been
able to do over the last few years is sort
of top up what people are getting through their countryside stewardship.
(36:13):
So there's a lovely breeding way to option through countryside stewardship.
Really it's fairly well paid and it's relatively easy to do.
But in order to make it really successful. There's a
couple of add ons you can do, and they're quite simple.
So I think what I'd like to highlight is how
that specific advice but you can give on top of
(36:34):
those options can be absolutely critical to making it work.
So all of these options are in place before the
project started, and what really made them work was just
that extra tweak of advice on top of it. If
you put an extra ditch through here, on extra scrape there,
or you maybe left this a bit longer, or if
you can target your predator management in this area, and
(36:56):
that's what really made them work. I mean, I think
you get so much more from your for those options
as well. So yeah, so that's what I would show,
is what can be done and what can be done
on top of it.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Cool, right, Well, I think we're going to wrap up,
but I've got the final question to you both. So
here we are at the game fair under the blazing sun.
If you were going to go and advise someone coming here,
what's the three things Megan that you're going to go
and say? You've got to go and see that other
(37:27):
obviously than the GWCT stand and buy a book by
some hedges? What would be the three things that you
are going to in your brief time off here where
you going to go and see?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
First, come to GWCT and sign up as a member,
right you can't. Data is key and this is the
only way we're going to get it, So come and support.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Us, Come and have a drink and have a chat,
get some advice. What else?
Speaker 3 (37:52):
The thing is every game fair? I don't get very far,
So this is the issue.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I think.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Just make the most of networking and talking to other people.
I think sharing ideas and knowledge is really important.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
And just seeing some of your buddies from our college.
That's like my highlight.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
It's going to see some old friends that I was
at college when I was sixteen and we never get
time to see each other. And what else could you do?
Speaker 1 (38:16):
That's my top ten? You're going to go and do
any You're going to do any retail therapy, Lizzie.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Ah, Yeah, probably try and stay away, but I expect
so maybe on Sunday when the sales.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Well, exactly, yes, let's be perfect. You're going to retail
for they I've already told my son that he's got
to get he's only allowed to even get his wallet
out on Sunday, and he then came back with one
of those stupid collars. My dogs never wear collars. He
bought a collar for the dog in one of those
polo belts and he doesn't even fit in, and so
he's paid top dollar for it as well.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Anyway, Oh, when he's working trousers, that's what we need.
We need some decent working trousers, decent kit that fit
a woman.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
You wrote a fantastic article in the Shooting Times about
it for women, and that was an interesting thing. You see,
I could have if I was a hackneyed journalist, I
could have been asking about do you find it really
difficult to work amongst all these men as women? But
clearly not no, because no, because at the end of
the day, we know that evidence, you know, speaks for itself,
(39:19):
and I think that. But one of the things that
I do see, and it was very just reading your
article about it, and when you sort of said, is
there any way I can speak to the editor of
the Shooting Times about, you know, kit for women? It
was something that just really doesn't fit on our radar.
So that weird thing of the sort of you know,
how challenging is it for women? To work in farming
(39:39):
and nature recovery and all that stuff is not at
all because we can see but you can't actually buy
any kit to go and work in. It's a bit
more fundamentals.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
I was taught at SPAJA.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
There's no such thing as bad where they're just inadequate clothing.
And sixty percent of GWCT is female field staff and advisory,
so we do need some good stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Now listen, I'm going to put this out there because
we are at the end of the day Britain's premiere
and I mean that quite sincerely, Rural podcast. I mean,
that's that's data. That is that's actually drawn from data,
that's not just my supposition. And if anyone's listening, which
they will be from the perhaps think about having a
(40:23):
chat with the women of the GWCT to go and
say what do we actually need in the field. And
then what a fantastic relationship that would be because you
say sixty percent of your field force a female, maybe
sixty percent. There you go. So that's it, And what
a thing to end on talking about ladies trousers. So
you know, that's great. That's all of shit we like
(40:45):
to do. Well, thank you so much. Lizzie. Thank you Meghan.
It has been loved to talk for you and I
told you, Meghan, i'd treat you gently. Have you been
gently treated? Very?
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Yeah, And it's a great podcast. I listen to it
every week.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Thank you by my book, I want to free one.
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