SIR – With a rapidly growing world population, the natural environment has never been under greater pressure.

Fifty years after the BBC April fool hoax of Spaghetti growing on trees, many urban children have at best a hazy notion of where their food comes from.

What is Bradford Council’s response to the need to install a greater understanding of and love for nature in the district’s young? Let’s close the Bracken Hall Countryside Centre in Baildon to save a paltry £23,000 compared to the hundreds of millions the Council spends each year.

The centre was a valuable educational resource used by schools and colleges across the district – a role that should have been expanded, not stopped dead.

In my view, the way forward would have been to transfer the centre to the countryside service and develop the hands-on approach to learning about nature, for which it could be a base.

If millions of pounds of lottery money could be found to revitalise the nearby Roberts Park or hoped for to refurbish Cliffe Castle Museum in Keighley, then Bradford Council could have done more to keep Bracken Hall open.

The haste with which it was closed before Baildon Parish Council or the Friends of Bracken Hall could work up considered proposals to keep it open and apply to funding bodies for grants, verges on corporate vandalism.

Councillor Roger L’Amie (Baildon Ward), Glen Rise, Baildon