I REFER to recent reports in press and TV that your Department Dept of Environment is planning a cull of the ruddy duck species because of its propensity to cross-breeding with its relation, the white-headed duck to the latter's disadvantage.

Let us not mince words, culling is a genteel word for killing, in fact for sheer bloody carnage, such as you propose. The ruddy duck, an attractive bird with chestnut plumage and a bright blue bill is well settled as a species in England.

What many people may not realise is that the white-headed duck is a native of such countries as Spain. The ruddy duck can only cross-breed with its Spanish relation by flying over from England to Spain, which is what it does. The result is that the ruddy duck's genes, stronger, more virile, dominate the union, producing ruddy duck dominated hybrids and weakening the white-headed duck strain.

As the Spanish species was already in a perilous state, due to irresponsible over-hunting by Spanish 'sportsmen' conservationists and the Spanish government have woken up to the danger of their duck becoming extinct. So what do these gallant dons have the impertinence to suggest?

They want us to slaughter all our healthy thousands of ruddy ducks, so that none are left to fly over to Spain and copulate with the white-headed variety. This is genocide on a breath-taking scale. I am told that over 6,000 wildfowl would die.

Even more incredibly this government has actually agreed to do this.

Why should this government seek to oblige the people whose trawler Armada, under the corrupt European Union's fisheries policy, virtually crippled the UK's fishing industry, defies reason.

While Defra's genocide squads (with their guns and power to force their way onto anyone's land) are carrying on with the carnage, Spanish 'sportsmen' will be lining up to massacre lovely song birds, passing in migration over Sprain towards their summer in England?

I am told, that to their shame, the RSPB and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, blandly accept this outrageous decision. I hope that the public, on whom these bodies depend for material support, will note this attitude.

ERIC JOHN BAMFORD

Pinnegar Way

Swindon