Introduction

The National Gamebag Census (NGC) is of considerable interest to the statutory agencies charged by the government with monitoring the status of UK wildlife, particularly with respect to mammals that are difficult to monitor by other means.  The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) is responsible for assessing and reporting on the state of UK biodiversity on behalf of these agencies.  In 2003, JNCC invited The Game Conservancy Trust (GCT) to join the Tracking Mammals Partnership, thereby giving official recognition of the importance of NGC records as a monitoring tool for wildlife management and conservation.

The resulting agreement seeks to improve data collection, collation and analysis of the NGC, which will make it an important part of the Tracking Mammals Partnership.  The latter comprises 25 organisations and aims to detect changes in the abundance and distribution of terrestrial and freshwater mammals.  Information collected by the Partnership will act as an early warning system for detecting changes in abundance for species of conservation interest and for pest or problem species.