The WRONG CATS

I very much enjoyed Liam Stokes’s informative piece on the reintroduction of the Eurasian lynx (The lynx effect, 6 September), as it cut cleanly through the hysteria regarding this latest “victim” of the rewilding fanatics. Mr Stokes makes some excellent points but I can’t help but feel uneasy; after all, if this overcrowded island could sustain a population of wild cats, they would not have died out in the first place.

Talking of wild cats, perhaps those who wish to reintroduce the lynx should concentrate their efforts on saving the Scottish wildcat, which is under considerable threat. Surely it would be better to conserve the UK’S existing fauna before introducing new ones. According to Scottish Wildcat Action (www. scottishwildcataction.org), we have just five years left to save this “tiger of the Highlands”.

In terms of conservation,

I see that lynx are now being hunted in Germany, having been successfully reintroduced 17 years ago. Once the cat has established itself in the Kielder Forest, Mr Stokes suggests that a pack of hounds will have to be formed to hunt it to keep the numbers