It’s that time of year when wildlife needs to feed up and be sustained with supplies for the long winter months.

So what happens here in Essex? The hedgerows that first got butchered in early spring then spent all summer struggling to recover in a drought - then just as they start looking like hedges again, along come the flaying machines and rip the life out of them.

As I drove through Ulting the other day I saw a tractor driving along a verge starting on its mission of destruction.

The hedge was full of fruit, on my return it was just a bare jagged leafless, fruitless barrier. Why? It wasn’t straggly, or overhanging the road.

All this talk of we need to look after nature, well let’s start by leaving our hedgerows to provide food, shelter, nesting sites, blossom for bees and insects and beautiful for us to look at in the spring.

It’s legal vandalism, it looks horrible and is absolutely devastating for our wildlife.

Lynne Leech

Katonia Avenue,

Mayland