Managing our deer population

If, as Kirsty Macleod (Letters, 12 April) says, only the so-called real working people of Scotland should dictate the management of its native forests, then it would follow that we should take a wholly disinterested view of the destruction of the Brazilian, Indonesian or Madagascar forests. The world has moved on since such parochial views were currency, and it has been recognised for several decades that the conservation of its resources must be viewed in a global, as well as a local, context.

Whether or not the forces advocating deer culls that might lead to sustainable deer populations in Scottish forests are from within or outwith Scotland is not really the point.

The rights to land management that Ms Macleod appears to be upholding are those of the sporting estate, where most of the land is owned and managed by comparatively few, many based outside Scotland. Under this system, the last vestiges of Scotland’s native pinewoods were reduced to 1 per cent of their former extent, with increasing deer populations destroying all regeneration. Fencing off further large tracts of woodland would restrict the deer to smaller areas and deprive them further of winter shelter, necessitating even larger culls in the absence of natural predation.

To defend such practices cuts right across the current grass-roots movement towards community involvement and sustainable management.

MARTIN ROBINSON

Enochdhu

Perthshire