THE news about the nationwide loss of meadowland and wild flowers will be deeply worrying to many readers (Wildflowers in decline, July 6).

It is part of a wider process in which we humans, especially those like us living in one of the richer nations, are recklessly killing off other life forms - animals, plants and insects - because they get in the way of the growth of our economy.

We have the power to destroy them, so we do.

Last year saw the death of one of the last white rhinos, and the near extinction of orang-utans and the forest that shielded them. This is being done on our behalf so that we can have a richer lifestyle with more varied and cheaper food, clothing, and digital gimmicks.

The old religious understanding that the natural world is a marvellous, finely devised system of wholly interdependent component parts, and that

exterminating one element puts the whole system at risk of creeping collapse, has gone.

Greed is now a virtue, not a deadly sin. Heaven help any wild strawberry, ragged robin, aphid, bee, or tree-hugging environmentalist that gets

in the way of economic growth.

Maurice Vassie,

Deighton, York