Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust Dinner
12 February 2015 · 19.30 - for 20.00 · Lempriere Room - Banjo
BackThe evening will be a dinner, then short talk from James Horne the founder and Chairman of GunsOnPegs, RodsOnRivers. James is also the Chairman of James Purdey and Sons Limited. James will be at Banjo with a colleague and a few guns from James Purdey and Sons Limited.
James has recently completed a census on Shooting with Strutt & Parker, he will give a short talk on the future of shooting
To reserve a table please email privateevents@banjojersey.com
Tickets are £65.00 for welcome drink and three course dinner (£20 donation to GWCT) Please do try to make a table of ten up or I will make up table with smaller numbers.
The reason for the dinner is to have fun and to continue to support GWCT in their efforts with two countryside management schemes here in Jersey.
The first is in its second year this is a project to manage an area of woodland in Rozel to benefit biodiversity, the project will continue over three years, this has been funded by a grant from the Environment Department and funds raised a previous GWCT dinner here in Jersey.
The second scheme would be to find areas of environmental land in Jersey. Brief description below:
Finding environmental land in Jersey
- Jersey has suffered a severe decline in farmland and woodland birds. Woodlands are suffering from a lack of management, as the woods have little or no commercial or sporting value (there is no driven pheasant shooting in Jersey). Agriculture in Jersey is intensive, with many areas double cropped for Jersey Royal potatoes, and then grass for silage. The potatoes are an early crop and a lot of south facing land – even steeply sloping land – is devoted to the crop. Potato land, following planting, is under plastic all winter – which must remove considerable food source from the birds. Field margins are very narrow and cut regularly.
- The amount of farm land ‘spared’ for wildlife is very small.
- However, alongside this farmland are many large houses with land. This land tends not to be used for intensive farming and could much more easily be used as environmental land. Perhaps this is ‘extra’ land that could be ‘spared’ for Jersey’s wildlife? Most of the homeowners would not have the same imperative to generate income from their land and might be prepared to manage it more sympathetically with wildlife in mind. We must appreciate what a precious resource we could potentially have in the fields surrounding their houses.
- The measures that homeowners could take on would be to:
- Allow hedges away from roadsides to grow thicker and cut them only once every two years;
- Feed birds in the hungry gap between January and May;
- Provide nest boxes for species like barn owls, kestrels, tree sparrows, etc.;
- Manage pieces of woodland to produce an understory and overwintering habitat.
- Obviously homeowners alone cannot solve Jersey’s wildlife challenge. We will need to see more land ‘spared’ on farm land too. The environment department is developing a new agri-environment scheme to underpin that, and GWCT has given advice on prescriptions that their research indicates would be effective. The main recommendations are to:
- Grow blocks of wild bird seed mix following an early potato crop on land which is due to go into maize the following year. This is potentially a very useful land to spare temporarily for farmland birds.
- Improve hedges and boundaries on farmland.