I READ with deep sadness and concern about the shooting of a pair of buzzards around Pillowell.

I have seen these wonderful birds catching thermals for a few years and now, they have been taken away from so many of us.

A friend of mine tells me how she and her friends watched these two birds as their youngsters were learning to fly.

What are we teaching our children about our very precious wildlife?   I saw a lady at the library in Coleford, teaching small children about insects and thought this was the best idea I had seen for a while.  

We also need a lot more of this to be taught in schools. I have seen the badger sett up on the recreational fields disturbed, glass all around it, entrances blocked up, and then, soon after, on an adjacent field, a flattened area with evidence of animals being killed with a badger's vertebrae.

I saw a badger that had been killed down by the river near Monmouth. It had clearly been tortured and burnt to death.

Now we have shooters about to begin mindlessly slaughtering 5,000 badgers here and in Somerset, whilst all the scientific evidence is against this.

I read on Facebook of a person who is intending to go out and shoot a fox and for why?

I am told that on areas where shoots are arranged, just about all wildlife is slaughtered. Yesterday I walked through an area where young pheasants have been released from pens and these birds will be shot by those who want a day's shooting. These areas are so silent, no birdsong. Is this what the countryside will be like in the future?

Our children will go to wildlife sanctuaries to see foxes and badgers because out in the wild these brutal killers will have obliterated our wildlife.

We also have the problem of wildlife theft and I venture to suggest that we need CCTV cameras around our lakes.

If we do love our wildlife, and want any left, then we need to stand up and call for much tougher sentences for those who kill wildlife.

– Marta Falco, Parkend.