In the last five or six years the rivers and Broads around Horning that were once teeming with coots, moorhens and all other small to medium aquatic birds now today appear to be nearly devoid of all these birds. I can answer this query with one word, otters.

Ever since otters have been let loose in our countryside without thought of what harm they could do to the other animals living there they have destroyed the natural balance built up over the years by leaving areas where they spread out too quickly devoid of any small birds who can only live in the habitat close to the waters' banks. That is without the thorny and controversial question of what harm they do to the fish in these waters. A single otter moving into a new area can cause more damage in a few months than man can do over several years.

The only way to stop this continuing is to capture these otters and fence them in controlled areas as they were before but this will never happen because the conservationists who came up with the idea of letting otters back into the wild will never admit their mistake.