The Return of the Grey Partridge - Roger Morgan-Grenfell and Edward Norfolk

The Return of the Grey Partridge tells the story of the actions taken on a West Sussex shooting estate on the South Downs nearby. The two farms involved in the conservation programme have the mission to produce arable food while offering days of shooting, with both elements needing to be profitable. To restore the wild partridge to "harvestable" numbers the farming landscape has to change, needing changes to management but resulting in a return to a diverse, biodiversity rich field system.

The results gained are the work of ecologists, scientists, agriculturalists and gamekeepers, acting together, planning and implementing actions beyond the scope of most people, but possible with drive, money and the will of the landowner.

This is a well written and interesting book, describing a way of life that few of us meet. The accounts of building beetle banks, planting hedges, setting aside field margins for native flowers and insects made us want to visit and see the diversity it describes. The community needed to run a shoot, with up to 90 paid employees on the day, supports the local economic area. But it left some of us deeply divided by the overall purpose.

Many of the readers were unhappy with the raising or protecting of birds to be shot. Natural predators are destroyed to improve the sport of unnatural predators with guns. While the book repeatedly emphasised the "legal predator control" being undertaken on the site, members of this group wondered if we would all have a shared understanding of what constitutes ‘vermin’, and of the role of humans in such control measures.

We did enjoy the book, more so than expected by some. There are wonderful descriptions of the return of the native songbirds, hares, flowers and insects. It tells of actions that can be taken by farmers to improve our natural world while still producing our food. 

I found this tale fascinating and hopeful, but there is a dilemma at the heart of this book that some found too hard to stomach.