Jill Proffitt, of Animal Rescue, Teignmouth, writes:

I receive many phone calls when letters like that of mr Grylls' reach the papers from people who are extremely upset at your constant dribble and moans about our seagulls,

All you are doing is inciting  certain people to poison/shoot/run over/drown and maim the birds, I know because we rescue them often with terrible injuries.

The seagull population has declined hugely in the last five years, mostly by secret culling of local authorities and so called expert individuals who have been given permission to kill the birds.

for people like you who feel they are a nuisance and have no rights to be here, these people kill in secret, and don't give their names. 

The birds have been here thousands of years – they have a right to live in a free, and pain free environment without the constant cruelty and persecution of people like you.

You may be interested, even pleased, to know seagulls, pigeons, and all corvids do not have it easy; they are exploited, killed and persecuted every day, but they are still trying to survive in a hostile world. If you are receiving nasty and abusive letters it's because most people feel totally disgusted at the constant verbal and physical attacks the gulls received. Love or hate them they have a right to be here.  

The world does not revolve around Mr Grylls or people like him; there are more important things to worry about in this world than the few remaining seagulls that sit on your roof, pinch the odd sandwich, swoop at the odd person while protecting their young or pooping on the unfortunate person walking by.

If you were living in a country with poisonous snakes/crocodiles/tigers/ and such like, would you demand that they, too, should be curbed or culled to extinction because they don't fit in with your lifestyle or the one that you think you're entitled to? 

What you're really asking for is a complete killing of all our seagulls, which the majority of us would certainly have an opinion about.  

We are losing so many birds often all we see in our skies is seagulls, pigeons and corvids; if they  go, what a quite empty environment we would be in.

for once think about the people who love all birds, and those this would truly affect should they totally disappear. so many people have no other way of life than to sit by a window to watch and hear the calling and antics of all our birds who have a right to be here.MORE LETTERS IN OUR DIGITAL EDITION