Castleacre Present Grey Partridge Conservation Award to Farming Brothers

Castleacre Director, Hugo Johnsen and Dr Roger Draycott presented the GWCT East Anglian Grey Partridge Conservation Award to a Cambridgeshire farming family.

The award and farm walk were hosted at Willow Farm near Sandy in Bedfordshire and was organised by a previous winner, Simon Maudlin.

This year’s winners, Andrew and Richard Ramply, of Ramply Farms in St Neots Cambridgeshire, are already award-winning arable farmers who are known for their environmental interests.

Castleacre Director, Hugo Johnsen said
‘ The walk at Willow Farm was a terrific opportunity to learn about Grey Partridge Conservation in action – it was an evening designed to help other landowners and land managers, with tips on best practice to protect and encourage the grey partridge. Happily the well-attended walk was blessed with decent weather which always helps.

We have always enjoyed our involvement with this East Anglian award over the years. It never fails to amaze me how passionate farmers and landowners are in this region about protecting our native species –  Richard and Andrew Ramply are deserving recipients. They have been very proactive in looking at how they can improve the land they farm for the native Grey Partridge and it has undoubtedly paid off. They are conscious about the environment as a whole and whether farming on their own land in Cambridgeshire or on contracted land they take a sensitive management approach; they do of course like every farming enterprise keep a firm eye on the bottom line but they are determined to preserve and improve biodiversity where possible.

Helping a fragile grey partridge population always requires additional dedication but overall the East of England is doing well relatively speaking,  retaining the greatest share of grey partridges with over 7600 birds recorded in 2022.’