| WELCOME - OUR WORK IN SCOTLAND
Foreword
Boost for Scottish team
WE ARE delighted to welcome the following members of staff to the team:
(L-R) Allan Wright, GWSDF shepherd manager, Adam Smith, GWCT Director Scotland, Philip Astor, HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, Andrew Salvesen, John Shields and Marlies Nicolai, GWCT research assistant.
write this with my term as Scottish chairman now drawing to a close. The next person to take on this role will face many challenges around game and wildlife conservation in Scotland. It will be good news for my successor that they will be working with an organisation that I have had great satisfaction chairing for the last four years. In the last year, your Trust has begun to address a very great challenge that faces Scotland as a whole: how will game conservation and farming work together to deliver wildlife, habitats, quality soils and water, sporting activity and income as our international and financial relationships change.
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Our demonstration farm, GWSDF Auchnerran, is on Deeside but reflects the challenges of farmland and moorland shoots and farming across Scotland, and arguably across much of the UK (see page 29). Many visitors, including HRH the Duke of Edinburgh in August 2016, have reflected on the value and timeliness of this project. This practical demonstration is complemented by the work done by our Advisory Service in Scotland, an integration that I hope you will explore at this year’s GWCT Scottish Game Fair. Our research takes place across Scotland, often in collaboration with bodies such as the James Hutton Institute, Scotland’s Rural College and Scotland’s Moorland Forum. It underpins both our demonstration work and our advice at all levels. Mountain hares, black grouse, and game crops are some of our on-going projects that link to policies which can both benefit and challenge game and wildlife conservation. The Trust also values the information we receive from our supporters. We hope contributors to the National Gamebag Census and the Partridge Count Scheme will be joined by those letting us know where curlew are breeding in Scotland. This data will help us improve the practical conservation of this critically endangered species. I close by saying that I will not be ending my association with the GWCT. I will be taking part in these projects as a member in the future, and I look forward to continuing to contribute to the non- executive management of the Trust in a number of roles. The work of this organisation is essential in the on-going development of game conservation in Scotland and is very worthy of your, my, and indeed much wider, support.
Sarah McDowell has joined as head of events for Scotland, responsible for all GWCT Scotland events, membership, sponsorship and PR, as well as shoot days at our Auchnerran farm. Sarah is a qualified marketeer and project manager who specialises in event management. Originally from Hillsborough in Northern Ireland, she lives with her husband Piers and two children near Edinburgh. Having enjoyed eventing and hunting in her youth, she more recently caught the shooting and stalking bug.
Before coming to the GWCT, Sarah worked in both the corporate and charitable sectors, notably working with the RSPB in the UK and Scotland, developing a new national programme of events including the Nature of Scotland Awards and Scotland’s BIG nature festival.
Merlin Becker is our new policy and advisory officer and grew up in the Republic of Ireland’s Wicklow Mountains. His passion for the natural world, especially heather moorlands comes from his father, a gamekeeper and sporting tour operator, who he says taught him all he knows about game and wildlife conservation. Merlin studied countryside and environmental management at Harper Adams University
and worked as a GWCT placement student at Langholm and at the Drumochter research station. He has also worked in Wales on the GWCT Uplands Recovery Project and was formerly with the Irish Grey Partridge Conservation Trust. He has a passion for all fieldsports, especially falconry, and has a German short-haired pointer, Zilverein Fraoigh.
Fiona Torrance is our new research assistant at the Scottish Grey Partridge Recovery Project. Fiona has a zoology degree from the University of Glasgow and experience as a biologist specialising in pest management and ecological services, and as a consultant ecologist. She has also volunteered with the Inner Forth Landscape Initiative, the BTO, Scottish Badgers and the
National Plant Monitoring Scheme.
Ruth Highley is a student field assistant at the Game & Wildlife Scottish Demonstration Farm at Auchnerran. She is studying at the University of Leeds, reading Ecology and Environmental Biology. She grew up in the Lake District, spending summer holidays on the west coast of Scotland. This led her to become involved with conservation projects in Glencoe
Andrew Salvesen SCOTTISH COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN 28 | GAMEWISE • SUMMER 2017
with the National Trust, and at Loch Gruinart, Islay with the RSPB before landing the role with the GWCT, which forms the industrial placement year of her degree.
www.gwct.org.uk/scotland
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