The Hopes Estate wins the 2016 Golden Plover Award sponsored by Lindsays

Lindsays is the proud sponsor of the 2016 Golden Plover Award and, in association with The Heather Trust and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (Scotland), are delighted to announce that The Hopes Estate near Gifford is the well-deserved winner.

The Hopes Estate was announced as the winner of this year’s Golden Plover Award during a special ceremony at The Scottish Game Fair on Friday 1 July. Four estates made the final shortlist and The Heather Trust and GWCT (Scotland), along with Michael Yellowlees, Partner and Head of Rural Services at Lindsays, introduced the successful candidates and presented their prizes.

Michael Yellowlees said: “We are delighted to be associated with the Golden Plover Award and are extremely proud of the fact that we have worked with generations of the same family on numerous estates and farms all over Scotland, many with strong sheep and sporting enterprises.”

The Golden Plover Award celebrates the best of integrated, sustainable upland management, and this year’s theme was sheep farming. These are challenging times for upland farmers, and the judges were looking for businesses, individuals and properties that have been able to knit successful sheep enterprises into other land uses, including sport, conservation and renewable energy.

Applicants came from across Scotland, and the judges narrowed down the field to four properties with a strong farming interest. In the North, Cawdor Estate and Phoines both demonstrated the benefits of sheep to grouse production by means of mopping up ticks and fostering close relationships between farmers and gamekeepers. On Donside, Candacraig Estate introduced sheep to assist with heather management and now run a flock of blackface and cheviots as part of a progressive and successful agricultural enterprise.

Site visits were carried out over the last few weeks, and The Hopes was ultimately announced as the winner of the award after the judges were impressed by the breadth and variety of management on the Lammermuirs estate.

The Award was presented to The Hopes along with a specially commissioned print by the artist Colin Woolf.

This is now the fourth year of the Golden Plover Award and speaking at the presentation ceremony, Heather Trust chairman Antony Braithwaite explained that “the good management that is taking place in Scotland is easily lost nowadays in the barrage of negative press that surrounds moorland management, and the purpose of this award is to highlight some of the very best work that is taking place across the country”.