Wild cats should be on TV -- not in our woods!
HAS the country gone wildlife mad? The fruitcakes who wanted to bring wolves back into Britain have compromised and now want to reintroduce a small spitting version of the tiger — the lynx — supposedly because there are too many deer eating our precious trees (mail). If you’d like our woodlands filled with these snarling, overgrown cats, you can support The lynx Trust, part of the World Wildlife Fund, which is valued at more than £500 million thanks to donations from kindly folk who pay to ‘adopt’ lions, tigers and rhinos. Where I live, in the Forest of dean, there’s already an almighty row because some chaps decided to let wild boar loose in the place, as in the olden days. The wildlife lobby is delighted: not so the dog-walkers whose pets are frequently hurt, home owners whose lawns get chewed up, or sheep owners who lose livestock. nobody, to my knowledge, has suggested bringing wild leopards into Britain, but lynxes are a step in that direction. I prefer savage beasties to be kept in wellrun parks or thrilling movies rather than running wild to savage the native deer we know and love.
DAVID DATTA, Coleford, Glos. one of the glories of living in the British Isles is that we can go for a country walk knowing we won’t come face to face with a life-threatening wild animal. This could change for ever with the renewed demand to introduce wild wolves and even bears, which would require full-time armed patrols in tourist areas, as they do in Canada and America. A TV programme shown last year had a presenter in America meeting farmers in an area invaded by wild wolves, introduced as a tourist attraction in a national Park. Having no predators, the wolves had rapidly multiplied. They hunted in packs and soon livestock farmers found their lambs, foals and calves torn apart. If the same sort of thing was allowed here, livestock farmers may go out of business. As we’ve seen with the fox population, ferocious wild animals would soon be in every street and garden as well as parks and countryside.
JOHN HEFFERNON, Cookham.