Hunting conserves British countryside (From Worcester News)

Hunting conserves British countryside

8:45am Monday 28th April 2008 in Read

SIR - It's no wonder Helen Smart (Worcester News, April 22) is desperate for the hunting debate to disappear given her poor knowledge of rural matters.

She claims hunts are guilty of breeding foxes. This accusation exposes her failure to understand the basic natural history of the fox. A vixen only produces one litter of cubs per year so how can their population be artificially increased? Perhaps she has evidence of foxes kept in battery cages and dosed with fertility pills. Her claim that hunting makes no contribution to conservation must be a joke. The truth is a massive amount of peer reviewed scientific work is on record backing the contribution hunting makes to conserving our countryside.

The final insult from Ms Smart is accusing farmers of flooding the countryside by not cutting hedges and cleaning ditches to increase their profits. As poor drainage and overgrown hedges only reduce crop yield and farmers' incomes, this argument literally holds no water.

JON BURGESS, Malvern.