The Purdey Awards for Game and Conservation
GREY PARTRIDGE PROJECT WINS TOP PURDEY CONSERVATION AWARD
The Ratcheugh Grey Partridge Restoration Project, run over 5000 acres of The Duke of Northumberland’s Alnwick Estate, has won the 2007 Purdey Gold Award for Game and Conservation.
The Duke, accompanied by Alnwick head keeper Garry Whitfield and partridge ground keeper Kevan McCaig, were presented with the Purdey Shield, a cheque for £4000, and a Jeroboam of Laurent Perrier Champagne, by actor and playwright Julian Fellowes at a ceremony in central London last night (Thursday 15th November)
The Purdey Awards for Game and Conservation are run annually by London gunmaker James Purdey & Sons to find the best of the United Kingdom’s game conservation projects, where habitats for wild and reared game birds have been improved and other species of flora and fauna have also benefited.
Richard Purdey, who has been running the Awards since 1999, said the judges had been unanimous in their decision to award the Gold to the Ratcheugh Project. The panel had felt the success and scale of the project was ‘nothing short of incredible’ both in terms of results achieved, and as an example of first class teamwork between the Alnwick Estate, Velcourt Farms, who manage its farming, and the Duke and his keepers who run the renowned Alnwick shoots.
Details of the 2007 results follow:
Gold Award +£4000 + Jeroboam Laurent Perrier Champagne
Ratcheugh Partridge Restoration Project on the Alnwick Estate
The Judges unanimous decision to make this Gold Award to the Duke of Northumberland’s Ratcheugh Project was driven by its sheer scale, both in terms of the results achieved and as an example of first class teamwork between Alnwick Estate, Velcourt Farms, which manage its farming, and the Duke and his keepers who run the renowned Alnwick shoots.
Richard Purdey said the judges felt the secret of Alnwick’s success was a shared passion by everyone involved in the project to save wild grey partridge from extinction, and a determination to prove that by creating the right environment a sustainable population of this once ubiquitous game bird can be restored and then successfully live and breed alongside intensive modern farming.
The judges were impressed that many compromises had been made in the farming regime in order to provide adequate field margins, irregular hedge cutting and importantly the agreement by Velcourt not to operate their farm machinery at night, thus preventing disturbance of the growing partridge population.
The project only commenced four years ago when there were just 5 breeding pairs of wild grey partridge. There are now 200 pairs on the 5000 acres now devoted to this project. “This is an extraordinary, exemplary, and most deserving winner” said Richard Purdey.
Silver Award + £2500
Lord Gerald Fitzalan Howard’s Carlton Towers Estate.
The Carlton Towers Estate conservation project is also devoted to restoring grey partridge, and impressed the judges for the outstanding teamwork evident between owner, Lord Gerald Fitzalan Howard and head keeper, Mr Mark Fitzer, and their inspirational efforts in achieving success with what many would have considered an impossible task.
The 2500 acre estate is situated close to the huge Drax power station, and bordered by hard worked arable farms not necessarily sympathetic to game birds or their conservation. Mark Fitzer’s outstanding achievement has been to persevere successfully at persuading neighbouring farmers to allow hedges to grow, to leave green stubbles, and even the local authority to cut verges and banks in sympathy with the conservation aims. They also encouraged neighbours and local and inner city schoolchildren to visit Carlton Towers to see for themselves, through its rich variety of wildlife, the environmental and ecological benefits of shooting and conservation.
In addition to the growing numbers of wild grey partridge the estate now boasts a pair of hobbys, four pairs of barn owls, flocks of tree sparrows and finches, nesting curlew and lapwing, visiting wild geese, resident water voles and a special area has even been devoted to butterflies. Central to there being 78 pairs of breeding partridge where five years ago there were none, has been Mrs Fitzer’s diligent fostering scheme where she places partridge eggs under broody hens for hatching, then persuades barren pairs of partridges to adopt the chicks and foster them. As her husband Mark puts it ‘There’s a real team feeling about Carlton Towers’. The judges agreed.
Bronze Award + £1000,
The Bulmer family’s 700 acre Bodior Estate in Anglesey, entered by Bodior’s farm manager Frank Llewellyn-Roberts.
With its own rocky shoreline on three sides, distant views of the mountains of North Wales and the Lleyn Peninsula, ancient woods bowed by the prevailing south westerlies blowing in from the Irish Sea, and wild bogs and ponds within the sound of RAF Valley’s jet trainers, Bodior is a paradise for woodcock, wild duck and snipe, complemented by a few reared pheasant.
As a consequence, the estate provides its owners with a delightful small family and friends shoot, and the judge’s were struck by owner Giles Bulmer’s and Frank Llewellyn-Roberts’s vision in the way they have planned and improved these natural habitats to best advantage for wild game. Their efforts to replace conifer plantations with mixed broad leaf trees, creating rides to allow safe shooting of the woodcock which migrate to Bodior in abundance in winter were particularly impressive, and the judges also liked their energetic marketing of the estate’s own game and farm produce through the Bodior farm shop and local restaurants.
Two Special Awards of £750 each:
John Grahams, Chairman of the Dee Wetlands and Wildfowl Management Club on the Wirrall
Robert Birrell, Captain of the Blackburn Syndicate, which shoots near Castle Douglas in Dumfries and Galloway.
The Dee Wetlands Club, whose members shoot over some of the finest saltmarshes on the Wirral peninsula, received their Award not only for the positive contribution they are making to local wildlife conservation and for controlling the shooting over this marshland at sustainable levels, but for their encouragement of newcomers to wildfowling, and the high standard of the Club’s education and training programmes for new members.
The Blackburn Syndicate, a non commercial farmers shoot run over 3000 acres of neighbouring farms near Castle Douglas, impressed the judges by its members’ exemplary habitat management, with well placed game crops and the introduction of small ponds, hedgerows and mixed hardwood plantations to encourage a notable variety of wildlife as well as gamebirds. The latter include snipe, woodcock, and wild duck alongside modest numbers of reared pheasant and redleg partridge.
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The annual Purdey Awards for Game and Conservation aim to encourage imaginative conservation projects which improve habitats for both reared and wild game birds, and which in the process benefit other species of flora and fauna and enhance enjoyment of the shoot and of the countryside.
Last year’s winner of the Purdey Award for of Game and Conservation was Col Johnny Clavering, OBE, MC, and his shoot and farming partner Mr Nicholas Timpson, owners of Seggiebank Farm near Kinross.
The Purdey Awards for Game and Conservation is now in its ninth year, the sponsorship having been taken over in 1999 by James Purdey & Sons from Laurent - Perrier Champagne who initiated the annual competition in 1985. The Panel of Judges is chaired by the Marquess of Douro, and the competition is organised and run by Richard Purdey, in close cooperation with The Game Conservancy Trust. Other members of the judging panel include The Duchess of Devonshire, Roy Green, David Clark and John Humphreys.
James Purdey & Sons Ltd has been a member of the Richemont Group of companies since 1994.
For further information on the panel of judges, or for more in-depth information on the winners, images etc. please contact:
Brian MacLaurin Associates Rania@brianmaclaurin.com or 020 834 1806
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