How to win with conservation and PR
The big new story in agrienvironment schemes and farmland conservation is farmer clusters — groups of neighbouring farmers working together to deliver landscape-scale conservation in a co-ordinated way.
Over the past few years, this approach has achieved an enviable reputation for delivering real conservation and biodiversity improvements, offering much better value for money when compared with the older schemes with their inflexible prescriptions.
So, why not shoot clusters as well? Groups of shoots that are still individual enterprises, but which are working together for a better countryside. In some ways, the idea does not sit too easily and keepers will be naturally concerned about issues such as encouraging straying where
