Reports of further extensive culling of mountain hares, including at the Balmoral Estate, make disturbing reading, and have met with widespread concern and condemnation (Queen urged to stop mass killing of mountain hares at Balmoral estate, News, March 20).
Mountain hares are listed as "a species of community interest" in Annex V of the EC Habitats Directive (1992), which requires any exploitation of listed species to be "compatible with their being maintained at a favourable conservation status".There are no official records of the numbers being culled, so it is difficult to discover whether this requirement is being met, with lorry loads being carted away.
In addition, among those being shot will be pregnant hares, as mating can begin as early as January. Mountain hares are the indigenous hares that have been in Britain since the Ice Age.
Will the guns fall silent only when these iconic creatures have been exterminated?
Marion O'Neil
Hare Preservation Trust
Dunfermline
Following protests about the killing of hares, those who lurk around Scottish Land and Estates dismiss Dr Adam Watson's claims about the mass "culls" as "misleading and inaccurate". This ignores what is, without doubt, misleading and inaccurate and that is the use of the word "cull". I lost count of the number of times this word was used in the wrong context in the news item in the previous week's paper (Anger over landowner hare cull, News, March 13) and again in last weekend's piece, even by those who are supposed to be on the animals' side. For example, Jonathan Hughes, chief executive of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, refers to "large-scale culls of mountain hares".
Culling of animals means selecting those who are supposedly "inferior", unhealthy or weak, a Nazi-style type of selection. The killing of perfectly healthy hares – or any other fit, healthy animals, for that matter – is never a cull and should not be referred to as such.
Whether the hares are "culled" or, as in this case, slaughtered, it is morally reprehensible and cannot be justified.
Given that the human population is too large, perhaps those who see nothing wrong in killing other animals with whom we share this planet, supposedly because there are too many of them, would like to volunteer to cut the human population down to a more acceptable level. Any offers?
Sandra Busell
Edinburgh
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