I WELCOME the letter by Dr Chris Reading (Have Your Say March 16) bringing attention once again to the dangers of putting large heavy grazing animals on to fragile heathland where no such animal was ever put in the past.

Recorded history of Dorset heathland suggests that there were only a few tracks across the 150 square miles of Egdon heath with a few thin, half starved, heath cropper ponies around the edges.

The gorse bushes near poorer habitations were used for fire wood and the bracken for bedding but cattle, no!

The grazing was just too poor and starving people too many for cattle to thrive.

For many years evidence has been gathered that points to cattle having an adverse effect on species that require mature heath for their existence. All to no avail.

Cattle grazing was seen as a cheap easy fix to the problem of heathland degeneration brought about by fragmentation through over development when what was required was a concerted effort to force developers to put sufficient funding into heathland to ensure its pre 1850 style use which was cutting pine, birch, gorse and bracken for fuel and bedding.

As it stands 20 years on, today one can still see fragments of bare sand used by sand and clay-loving invertebrates along with fragile Sand lizard nesting areas ploughed up to deep penetrating hooves and burried under dung.

It’s the same way the New Forest degenerated from supporting thriving communities of sand lizards to extinction in around 35 years flat.

Supporting fragile heathland reptlies and invertebrates, grazing does not.

DOUGLAS MILLS (Former Species rescue officer for the British Herpetological Society), Fraser Road, Poole