ONCE again it is blatantly obvious that Scotland is seen as a glorified theme park to various wildlife single interest groups ( "Springwatch host calls for wolves to be reintroduced to Scotland," The Herald, May 19).
The presenter Chris Packham, whose programme was censured by the BBC for its urban bias, displays a complete disregard for the fact that the countryside is a working environment where people work incredibly hard just to survive in many cases.
Now Mr Packham promotes reintroducing wolves on the basis that they would control roe deer. This begs the question if you were a wolf. would you attempt to chase and catch the elusive and fleet-footed roe deer or the much slower and plentiful sheep on the hill? Predators adapt to their environment and survival is ensured by expending the least energy to catch food. The fact that the hill farmer loses his stock is obviously of no consequence to these people.
In the case of Paul Lister and his Highland wildlife park I would suggest there are a couple of problems which are being ignored.Mr Lister suggested he would fence in the whole estate to prevent escape but having seen snow drifts which not only overwhelmed stock fences but in some cases houses I wonder how high this fence would need to be? The construction of such a fence would also surely contravene rights of access.
I realise that there is a disconnect between urban dwellers and those who live and work in the countryside but that is no reason to make life even harder for the countrymen just to enable a few city dwellers to be able to gawp at a wolf. That is what zoos were invented for and Scotland is not a zoo.
David Stubley,
22 Templeton Crescent, Prestwick.
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