There is a discussion to be had about the reintroduction of white-tailed eagles, but it is not much advanced by Chris Loder characterising those who disagree with him as mostly “unpleasant social media trolls”, nor by the politician’s habit of dropping a meaningless statistic into the argument: the loss of 181 lambs at one farm in Scotland “over a single monitoring period” may be a lot or not much, depending on the size of the farm and the length of the monitoring period.

Furthermore, the Norfolk project he cites had widespread support among conservationists and the general public, but was cancelled by a cabal of influential landowners.

It is worth bearing in mind that while eagles are a UK native species, sheep are not.

For commercial reasons, all their potential predators, including eagles, wolves, bears and wild cats, have been killed off, causing a direct and consequential reduction in natural diversity - this in a country which has only 50.3% of its biodiversity left, one of the worst records in Europe.

No one likes to see farmers lose lambs for any reason, but let’s not elevate sheep farming to the point where it automatically takes precedence over everything else.

Giles O’Bryen

Ryall