I HAVE taken some time over what I should put in this letter and who I am trying to convince to change.

I live on the edge of the Forest and have for some years enjoyed the pros­pect of walking or cycling along the fire roads and deer tracks.

The thought of losing such a valuable place has troubled me along with other users of the Forest be they dog walkers, tourists, mountain bikers, horse riders or runners.

I was brought up to value the Forest due to an upbringing near Liverpool.

The stark difference between concrete and tarmac and the ever-present throng of people was like a bolt of lightning to an 11-year-old.

That was some 46 years ago but I still retain that awareness of the beautiful Forest we live in.

That beauty is being ruined by animals that have no place being there anymore. The silent majority of people in the Forest have been held to ransom over free-roaming sheep and now the boar.

Like most Foresters I have a practical nature and like to think of myself as a realist when it comes to local and national issues.

In the distant past we were allowed to hunt animals for food or in other cases for sport, the latter I do not support.

Nevertheless this hunting kept numbers down so these animals were not a nuisance to farmers and smallholdings.

We now live in a world were we are not allowed to pursue such activities and we live in a better world for it in most cases.

The problem is we have no way of controlling what has now become an out-of-control nuisance.

Our Forest has become a building site, flowers are rooted up leaving great scars in their place, dog walkers are in terror of using the fire roads and the boar are moving closer and closer to populated areas.

The Forestry Commission walks a tight line in this, having to convince the unenlightened that a cull is necessary so they are not accused of murder.

I, like most, would like our Forest back so we can continue to use it and take pleasure from it without the danger of coming across an angry boar or coming across a lamb which has been left abandoned by its mother only to die of starvation because the owner lives in Gloucester.

Let's have a vote once and for all to keep or get rid of these animals which have been left to their own devices.

As an upstanding citizen I would go along with the outcome which ever way it came out. Could the Friends of... do that?

– W Ervig, Whitecroft.