THEY are the cliche beloved of historical novelists and directors of gothic horror films. If there is a raven on the first page or in the opening shots, you know that what follows will be a dark tale, of blood and revenge.

There are many misconceptions about these beautiful corvids, the high-gloss version of the matt-finished crow, the iron-pumped cousin of the scrawny rook. They are to their species what Armani is to M&S: sleek, stylish, and full of authority.

Guardians of the Tower of London, they are ubiquitous in the countryside, where they caw like Macbeth’s witches and wheel around ruined castles as if Hitchcock was behind the camera.

No wonder sheep tremble when they hop closer and closer to their newborn lambs. These birds peck out eyes in defenceless animals as if they were picking chocolates from a box.

Nature, of course, is not for the squeamish, and “red in tooth and claw” was a line that could have been written for any of the crow family, whose voracity has earned them a bad press. At the moment, however, it’s their predilection for fellow birds that has caused a furore. Thanks to the raven’s taste for wading species such as the lapwing, curlew and golden plover, Scottish Natural Heritage had awarded a licence to a Perthshire group, Strathbraan Community Collaboration for Waders, to cull them. According to this, 60 ravens will be killed annually over a period of five years, thereby allowing these universally beloved but seriously declining waders to breed and regroup.

Three hundred ravens is a relatively low number, and the plan sounds straightforward and sensible. As with most things when it comes to keeping the natural world in balance, however, it isn’t either of those things.

For a start, the raven is a protected species. So when does “protected” lose its meaning? Given those in favour of the licence to cull – the Countryside Alliance and Scottish Land and Estates among them – the cynical answer is, when it affects the livelihoods of shooting estates. Because as it pecks its way along the buffet, the raven also eats red grouse chicks and eggs, thereby imperilling big business. The latest stramash, behind which evangelical TV naturalist Chris Packham has thrown not just his weight but an arsenal of hyperbolic adjectives, has led to Mike Cantlay, the chairman of SNH, receiving a deluge of abuse, including a death threat.

Personally, I’m inclined to let nature take its course, and if intervention is required to safeguard imperilled species, to find alternatives that do not include destruction. But it is naive as well as offensive to think that SNH is a trigger-happy outfit which prefers the fluffier lapwing to the carnivorous raven. All statements by its beleaguered chief suggest considerable soul-searching over the matter, and regret that extermination might be necessary. Indeed already, following the level of public protest, the licence is under review.

As pressure on the countryside intensifies, such flare-ups are going to occur more frequently. Competing interests are escalating, be it traditional farming, forestry and game shooting, or tourism and sport, or individual country lovers, ornithologists and botanists. One man’s photo opportunity of a lifetime – a nine-point stag – is another man’s prize pest, snacking on fir saplings, destroying ground cover, siring so many offspring it poses a risk to the environment, as well as on the roads and to itself.

Nor can public pressure be the main arbiter of how to manage wildlife, as those salmon fisheries which kill marauding otters and seals are painfully aware. The calibration of what can be left to act as nature intended, and what needs to be restrained, takes expertise. It is a question not of emotion or sentiment, but of common sense. And when tough action is unavoidable, then as vets, naturalists, game-keepers and farmers will tell you, there are worse things than a clean death.

We like to fool ourselves that the countryside is wild, and has always run itself. Yet other than the high peaks or our magnificent peat bogs, it is largely a man-made landscape. For millennia, humankind and flora and fauna have lived alongside each other, often unhappily for nature.

Perhaps now is the time to establish a set of unwavering principles that might finally be to nature’s benefit. Among them should be the rule that protected species cannot be harmed, and that only in the most serious situations, where human or wildlife health is endangered, will we intervene. That includes not introducing alpha predators long since extinct, such as bears and wolves, which is meddlesome in the extreme.

At times the natural world needs to be checked, but it is surely better to let it regulate itself, or be modified by unstoppable outside forces such as climate, than impose the interests of one group or another. After all, none of them will be entirely disinterested. Instead, we must let go, and give nature its head. And when we have no alternative but to act, or choose to offer a helping hand, it should be not as God, but as guardian angels.