Estate owner Count Konrad wins gold award for planting a million trees and 23 miles of hedges

The gold award for game and conservation in this years’ coveted Purdey Awards has been won by 61-year-old Austrian Count Konrad Goess-Saurau, owner of the Temple estate and farm at Rockley, Marlborough.

It has been named as the best in the country for shooting after no fewer than a million trees and 23 miles of hedges have been planted there since the Count originally bought the estate in 1985.

He was presented with a trophy and £5,000 cheque in the Purdey Long Room headquarters of the famed gunmakers in Mayfair.

The prize was recognition of “transformational conservation work” at Temple Shoot carried out by Count Goess, who owns extensive areas of land in east Wiltshire, particularly around nearby Winterbourne Bassett, and for building up an first rate shoot.

“This is a most impressive entry by any standard,” said awards organiser Richard Purdey.  “Count Goess wins our Gold Award not only for the leading role he’s played with 41 other farms involved in this Nature Improvement Area, but also for actively encouraging visits from local schools, and the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, to see how this exemplary estate manages its farming, conservation and shoot.”

Count Goess’s long-term vision and investment has transformed the landscape of what was formerly a 2000-acre prairie style arable farm with few habitat benefits for birds and wildlife.

Over a period of almost 30 years he has planted 23 miles of new hedgerows, over a million trees, and in the past five years has constructed nine new dew ponds to help support a healthy population of roe deer.

Temple Farm’s grey partridge restoration project was discontinued because of the proximity of big neighbouring red leg partridge shoots, but Count Goess and his estate manager Chris Musgrave instead focused on achieving the maximum habitat benefits for other farmland bird species.   Planting game cover, over-wintering stubbles, and the implementation of determined vermin control has paid off.   To quote Temple Farm’s head keeper Phil Holborrow: “The RSPB nearly wet themselves when they counted 115 lapwings in addition to stone curlews, yellowhammers, turtle doves, tree sparrows and skylark”.

This led to Temple Farm being chosen as the launch site of Natural England’s South-West Farmland and Nature Improvement in 2012 and the Temple Farm being featured on BBC1’s Big Wildlife Revival series in September.

Count Goess was presented with the Purdey Awards Shield and a cheque for £5,000, by Sir Barney White-Spunner, the executive chairman of the Countryside Alliance.