Goats destroyed Cyprus
From David Critchley
Sir: In Devonshire a goat may be a man’s best friend (Letters, 5 February), but in Cyprus matters are different. Sir Ronald Storrs, governor of the island from 1926 to 1932, described its goats as ‘300,000 public enemies’. The principal reason, in his view, for the decline of the island from its fabled prosperity under the Lusignans to the poverty of his own day was the destruction by goats of the forests that had retained the moisture in the soil. ‘A melancholy sight it was,’ he wrote, ‘after heavy rainfall to behold the precious flood that should have been retained for Cyprus by the resistance of trees, bearing away the life-giving humus in a dull yellow streak miles long into the Kyrenian sea.’ David Critchley
Winslow, Buckinghamshire
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