Congratulations on a good, fair report of the Countryside Alliance demonstration in London (The Argus, September 23).

The general public has been misled into believing the march was to "defend the freedom" of those who wish to continue with the "harmless leisure activity of fox-hunting", one of those eccentric British habits that "not only gives pleasure but also does demonstrable good to the ecology and economy of the countryside".

Appropriately, the article quotes a remark made by the chairman of the Alliance: "Anybody who thinks this is just about hunting must be living on a different planet." The real problems faced by those who dwell in rural areas are much more fundamental.

Swathes of the countryside where hunting "traditionally" occurs were created, in the first instance, by forcefully driving small farmers and rural workers off the land and crowding them into the new city factories and workplaces.

Denuded of people, the mega-rich landowners and aristocrats turned the countryside into their private plaything - a theme park for hunting, shooting and fishing. Armies of keepers are employed to eliminate any putative predator whose teeth, beaks or claws threaten the creatures they themselves want to chase.

Hence, eagles, peregrines, owls, otters, wolves and so on have all been eliminated by earlier generations of hunters.

The landowning gentry are ferocious in defending their acquisitions. Look at the draconian "anti-trespass" laws. The annual grouse-shooting massacre in Scotland, for example, is a monstrous example of obscene aristocratic privilege. Should we support the "right" of these individuals to own half the land so they and rich Arabs and Germans can slaughter artificially bred birds?

For all their sound and fury, big farmers and landowners have been the prime despoilers of the countryside, pouring more and more noxious chemicals into the land for greater and greater profit. Now we have the "new industrialist" landowners who have effectively turned virtually the entire countryside in areas such as East Anglia into a denatured desert. No wonder foxes and other animals are moving out, fleeing to the much friendlier environment of the towns and cities.

-Dr Bob Potter, Addison Road, Hove