Letter: Muntjacs munch too much

HOW nice for Richard Mabey to have "lakes of bluebells" to feed muntjacs ("Country Life", Review, 23 April).

Let me tell you about my garden. I have a family of muntjacs living in it. Every single thing except daffodils and mature trees is surrounded by wire netting. (Even then they get through.) Tulips are eaten to the ground; the young growth on all my roses is so severely browsed that the plants barely recover late in the summer; viburnum flowers are systematically nipped off; bark is stripped from the flowering dogwoods ... I could continue.

As muntjacs inexorably spread, others with fewer rolling acres than Mr Mabey will experience what they can do and perhaps there will be less of this wonderful tolerance.

A M Whitehead

Banbury, Oxfordshire