Madam,

Licences are being granted by Natural Resources Wales to kill ravens: nearly 50 in three years.

Our largest and most intelligent corvids, they were driven to the edge of extinction through hunting and trapping, only beginning to recover in the 1990s.

The raven is still protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, but Michael Gove has issued licences to shoot them in five English counties and for Scottish Natural Heritage to kill 60 a year for five years.

At the William Condry Memorial Lecture in Machynlleth on Saturday (13 October), Jim Perrin read the famous Guardian piece describing a raven’s aerobatics and great repertoire of calls.

Then Iolo Williams horrified the large audience with the information that our protected, iconic Welsh birds are also threatened by decisions made by the very body charged with caring for and augmenting the unique and irreplaceable species of the extraordinary environment still surviving here.

In the words of conservation expert Rob Sheldon: “Ravens are being killed to protect non-native pheasants.

“I cannot understand it.”

It is on a par with granting scallop dredgers permission to rip up and utterly destroy the valuable and protected sea bed of Cardigan Bay.

Destruction is the direct opposite of conservation.

Yours etc,

Victoria Bamford, Eglwysfach, Machynlleth.

Have your say on the local issues affecting you - email [email protected] or join in the conversation on our Facebook page