Bird-brained

SINCE the introduction of firearms and with the ever-continuing intensification of the micro-management of the countryside by urbanised mankind, the “balance of nature” has long since become a toy of well-meaning legislators who depend almost entirely on the advice they get.

SINCE the introduction of firearms and with the ever-continuing intensification of the micro-management of the countryside by urbanised mankind, the “balance of nature” has long since become a toy of well-meaning legislators who depend almost entirely on the advice they get.

Much of that advice comes either from organisations and charities where the politics of nurturing the source of their income takes precedence over everything remotely connected with “nature”, or from narrow, single-issue groups.

If Patrick Stirling-Aird’s Scottish Raptor Study Groups (Letters, 29 June) were indeed only about studying raptors that would be fine. However, what sticks in the craw is their obsession with promoting raptors to the exclusion of all other bird life under the guise of “study”.

Irvine Inglis

Reston

Berwickshire