REGARDING the article in The Northern Echo Wednesday, May 4, which detailed the measures to be taken to ensure the survival of the grey partridge.

Their numbers now are approximately 150,000 pairs and they are classed as a most endangered species – a classification that places them on the RSPB’s red list.

Their decline has everything to do with pesticides and herbicides used in modern agriculture to kill pests and reduce weeds.

Partridges are totally ground living birds and very prone to crop spraying chemicals.

Shooting is still permitted when partridge are “in season” but no more than 25 per cent of the birds should be shot. It is about time to have a ban on shooting grey partridge until stocks improve.

Red legged partridge are now reared and released on lots of shoots, as they are easier to incubate and hand rear than grey partridge.

I am reading a book called Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, an American biologist who died in 1964.

She wrote her book in 1962 about the horrors of pesticides and herbicides in America and the rest of the world.

It makes sad reading, even for 1962, when DDT and other lethal chemicals were sprayed about at will by crop duster planes and almost everything died afterwards.

If the spray did not kill the animals it made them infertile, particularly birds.

More testing of the effects of all agrichemicals on the environment is needed – and needed quickly. It is now 50 years on and we are still making the same mistakes.

Malcolm Rolling, Durham.