Conservation can be an inconvenient thing. Imagine how it feels for Brazilian farmers not to be allowed to cultivate land on which rain forest is growing.

Or how the Maasai must feel when their traditional grazing land in East Africa is turned into wildlife reservations.

From the safe distance of Sussex, we might think preserving Amazonian rain forest and endangered African animals is good for the world but it's harder to support similar conservation efforts when they're on your doorstep.

Should the wolves which were once indigenous to Scotland be reintroduced? It's difficult to argue they shouldn't if, at the same time, you think its right that, say, tiger populations should be preserved in India.

If you believe in animal conservation, then you've also got to be in favour of the reintroduction of wild boar in England (including Sussex), however disruptive they might be to our profits - I mean, to our way of life.

So what of The Friends of Waterhall in Brighton's efforts to let sheep graze Waterhall to "keep the grass short...and encourage wild flowers"?

Of course, if the Downs were to be fully restored to their natural state, trees would have to be replanted across them so they became covered with a forest as was originally the case.

But how many people would support properly restoring the Downs in this way? Probably not many.

-Tom de Kadt, Hove