One can be a conservationist and still eat meat – it’s not only vegetarians who campaign to Save the Whale or against battery farming. If you want to eat meat but are against factory farming, then shooting wild animals, as long as it doesn’t endanger them as a species, is not inconsistent with general animal welfare, though obviously the individual creature isn’t too pleased about getting shot at.

When Philip Wayre set up the Otter Trust, English otters were an endangered species. He spent several decades breeding them in captivity for the purpose of reintroducing them to the wild. This has been done with such success that he is winding down the work of the Otter Trust and has stopped the captive breeding programme, as he thinks keeping otters in a zoo is only acceptable if they are endangered, to save the species.

I happen to live in Earsham, which is why I’m boringly knowledgeable about it, sorry.