Disease? It’s all about shooting

Sir, – I am writing in response to Graham Brown’s report in The Courier (March 31) which highlights the danger of disease transmission between mountain hares and people.

Airlie Estates factor Malcolm Taylor rightly flags up the dangers of Loupin illness and Lyme disease to both sheep and humans from ticks in the environment.

He assigns blame for this danger to the status of mountain hares as vectors for tick-borne diseases and justifies their culling accordingly.

A vaccine to inoculate sheep against Louping illness has been available for many years. The cost of inoculation can be partly offset by the subsidy available for driven grouse moors which have a few grazing sheep present on them, thus adding to the estate’s income. Grouse moors without sheep attract no subsidy.

However some of these estates also introduce pheasants in very large numbers to provide for shooting enthusiasts.

Pheasants are a very effective vector for Lyme’s disease and research has credited them with being instrumental in both the maintenance and spread of the disease in the UK.

A study by Oxford University’s Tick Research Group suggested that a reduction in the number of pheasants in the environment would wipe out the disease in the UK.

It is telling indeed, that sections of the shooting lobby carry out mass culls of mountain hares for reputedly infecting red grouse and, very occasionally, humans while releasing thousands of pheasants on other lower-lying parts of their estates.

The habitats of red grouse and pheasants rarely overlap to any large degree.

In terms of strategies to aid human health concerns this would appear to be contradictory.

One could conclude the shooting estates are primarily interested in income and the mass culling of hares, and simply tag on the concern for human health as a tactic to mislead the public.

Pheasants in low-lying, more densely inhabited areas constitute a much bigger problem to more people, in terms of transmittable diseases, than mountain hares ever will.

Meanwhile it is worth keeping in mind that a Louping illness vaccine is available

If this is not the case then why do they annually introduce up to 45 million pheasants, many of which become infected by various pathogens dangerous to human health, while carrying out mass culls on mountain hares which humans very rarely come in contact with?

Talking of animals, I smell a rat! George Murdoch. 4 Auchcairnie Cottages, Laurenckirk.