Letter: Moor the merrier

As an owner of moorland in Scotland I get more profit from tourists than shooting, and a golden eagle guaranteed on my land would give me probably more net income than grouse.

I am intrigued by the regularity and volume of your newsprint castigating wildlife crime - equal, it seems, to that on knife crime or child abuse, as if their respective prevalence and importance to society were in any way equivalent.

Letters to your paper from abroad threaten a tourist boycott, and illustrate our tarnished image.

In an article in Raptor Politics last week, Roy Dennis referred to RSPB figures, concluding that 50 golden eagles had been shot or poisoned in Scotland since 1989.

Logan Steele (Letters, 4 August) gives a figure over 20 times that, at "50 killed every year". Either figure would be too many, but exaggeration harms us all and the reputation of Scotland.

If we have a problem in Scotland, surely that in England is far worse, where the single pair that started breeding in 1969 have, more than 40 years later, failed to extend their range or numbers.

Might it be possible that there are factors such as climate change and land use that are more inimical to eagles than gamekeepers, and better deserve your newsprint?

Hector Maclean

Kirriemuir

Angus