LANDOWNERS are being urged to help to preserve the habitats of the endangered grey partridge.

Residents of Redcar and Cleveland, which is prime partridge territory, are being asked by the Game Conservancy Trust to join the Partridge Count Scheme.

The project will help to identify when the county's Biodiversity Action Plan target of 230 partridge pairs by the end of 2005 has been reached.

Grey partridges have suffered a massive population decline of 86 per cent over the past 25 years.

But the Game Conservancy Trust, is confident this year will be a turning point.

After facing extinction in Britain in 1995, the Government gave the species priority under the UK's Biodiversity Action Plan process, choosing The Game Conservancy Trust as lead partner to ensure the plan's success.

The aim of the plan was to halt the bird's decline by 2005 and to bring the population to more than 150,000 pairs by 2010.

The trust wants to encourage land managers to create suitable conditions for grey partridge, including providing the right habitat for nest sites, summer and winter feeding areas, and controlling predators.

The Grey Partridge count scheme helps to track numbers and breeding success of partridges in each region.

A further boost for grey partridges this year will be the introduction of the Government's new Environmental Stewardship farming scheme, which will pay landowners to implement wildlife-friendly practices.