BBC remove 'wildly inaccurate' claim over grey partridge numbers

The BBC have had to remove false information in relation to grey partridge numbers in the UK, after receiving a complaint from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT).

In a BBC Radio 4 show that aired last week, the Short Cuts programme claimed that there were only 100 grey partridges left in the country.

The GWCT were quick to point out to the BBC, that although numbers have declined by more than 90% since the 1960s, their claim that "today there are only about 100 grey partridges left in the UK" is not just incorrect, but "wildly inaccurate."

Rather, the national population figures published by the Avian Population Estimates Panel this February estimates that there are 37,000 pairs in the UK.

Writing in response to the complaint, the BBC said: "The producers were using figures from the Zoological Society of London and realise that they misread the spreadsheet, hence the much lower figures quoted in the feature. We would like to apologise to the GWCT for this mistake and reassure them that it was due to human error and absolutely not intended to undermine or misrepresent their conservation efforts, or those of the farmers and gamekeepers they work with."

The false information has now been removed from the episode on their website and on BBC Sounds.