Thank you for drawing attention to the "killing fields" of our Highland glens (Foreign hunters threaten survival of mountain hare, September 3). However, you cannot blame tourists for the possible extinction of mountain hares. If you were able to access Scottish estate archival records of birds and animals shot, you would see how well distributed mountain hares were in Scotland in the middle of the twentieth century. Today, if you were to ask the same question of local people and gamekeepers in rural Perthshire, they would tell you that swathes of upland Perthshire are devoid of any significant numbers of mountain hare. Perthshire was once known for its abundant mountain hare population.
The main reasons for the slaughter and disappearance of hares in our glens lie with the owners of grouse moors and shooting estates.
Local populations of hares have been eradicated by the owners of a number of grouse moors because they carry a tick with a virus that can kill red grouse. Most of Scotland's upland birds and mammals carry the same tick. Is this justification also to cull these birds and animals so that a small privileged group can enjoy themselves shooting wild red grouse?
If ground is over-shot then past records show hare populations will not recover. The prevention of over-shooting is the responsibility of owners, not the people who are allowed to shoot on it. A more cynical suspicion is the fact that hares are prey species for golden eagle and raven and other upland mammals and, therefore, areas devoid of hares will make it harder for these species which also prey on grouse to survive.
Is the solution to this problem of poor environmental stewardship on some estates to withhold government grants and subsidies from the owners and bring in laws to ban shooting on their ground so the majority of us can enjoy our natural heritage? If such measures were introduced you would see a notable decrease in wildlife crime.
Neil Macdonald, 192 Cedar Drive, Perth.
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