I AGREE with David Stubley (Letters, May 20) that Scotland is not a zoo.
I'm sure that he will also agree with me that Scotland is not a sheep farm nor a shooting estate.
Scotland belonged initially to the wild creatures that were here long before man arrived. Animals like the wolf were not some mythological creature but a part of the Scottish fauna before they were hunted to extinction. As a young hitch-hiker many years ago I photographed a roadside stone in Sutherland, near Helmsdale, that marked the spot near where the last Scottish wolf was killed around 1700AD. If Scotland can re-introduce a native political system after 293 years surely it is not too much to ask that the native wolf be re-instated after just 315 years ("Springwatch host calls for wolves to be reintroduced to Scotland", The Herald, May 20)?
Apart from the problem of alien sheep denuding the hills of their flora the main benefit of introducing the wolf is to control the vast numbers of red deer (not roe deer as some mistakenly suggest) making things worse. Their numbers are the result of mismanaged shooting estates shooting only stags. If heavily subsidised sheep are also killed then so be it, they are a relic of the Clearances". Many sheep are killed annually by feral dogs and even sheep dogs, so why are they not removed from Scotland?
A zoo is for caged animals; those formerly native - the wolf, beaver and lynx - should be extensively re-introduced to the wild. No doubt the compensation mentality will go into overdrive, but it is certainly a price worth paying.
Bernard Zonfrillo,
28 Brodie Road, Glasgow.
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