Let nature manage wildlife, not blood sports

Jim Barrington of the Countryside Alliance asks (The Yorkshire Post, April 2) how anti-blood sports groups would manage wildlife. In a word: Nature.

Animals and birds, left in their natural state, regulate themselves on a supply and demand basis.

It is unnatural for an 
estimated 40 million pheasants and partridges, which are not native to this country, to be factory farmed for shooting 
each year, with more than 
half not eaten, and many left 
to die from injuries or other causes.

The ecosystem is impacted in a number of ways by this practice.

It is illegal to block badger setts to prevent foxes going to ground when hunted. This means badgers, protected animals, slowly suffocate or starve to death. Badger setts do not need to be blocked for so-called ‘trail’ hunting, often a cover for illegal fox hunting.

Other animals and birds of prey are killed so they do not catch any game birds bred especially for gunmen who pay well for this ‘sport’.

Mr Barrington seems to 
think all this improves animal welfare.

Little wonder the majority of people in this country are against blood sports.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor