YOUNG people today who are passionate about conservation might find it hard to credit the orgy of mega-vandalism that was unleased on the British countryside some 50 or so years ago.

Much of the destruction was the work of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff – which is now called Defra, having changed its name in an effort to evade some of the richly deserved odium and infamy).

The biggest atrocity was undoubtedly the systematic bulldozing and grubbing out of tens of thousands of miles of hedgerow, many of them remnants of ancient wildwood that clad this country in the wake of the last Ice Age.

This damage was fundamental and irreparable.

Things are still bad today, and there are absolutely no grounds for complacency, but I like to think that, as far as this country is concerned at any rate, the kind of blatant in-your-face environmental thuggery practiced by MAFF and its official idiots is a thing of the past.

However, to quote Edmund Burke “for evil to succeed it is only necessary for good people to do nothing”.

Tony Kelly, Crook