I picked up a story recently on the BBC website. It dealt with the re-introduction of Wild Boar in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire in Britain.
The Wild Boar is the indigenous wild swine of Europe. They are hairy, tusked, fierce animals; and a full grown boar weighs in somewhere between 80-100 kg. The beast appears frequently in medieval heraldry; King Richard III of England chose the Boar as his personal insignia no doubt because of its traditional reputation for ferocity and orneriness.
This reputation placed the boar at the top of the must hunt list. After all real men in the medieval world wanted to hunt something that might fight back. Hunting boar was carried out on horse back with spears and dogs, it was bloody and dangerous. There was no honour in blasting away at something with a sniper scope from several thousand yards back then. Needless to say Wild Boar have been extinct in England since the 13th Century and despite attempted re-introductions by various Kings for hunting stock the beast has not been seen tripping through the forest since the 1500’s. Of course it warmed the heart of this greenie to hear that this creature was once again to be found in English forests. Apparently a few years ago several animals escaped from a game farm near the Forest of Dean, a modest 110 km2 of mixed forest in Gloucestershire. Another group of animals may have been illegally dumped in the area as part of a guerrilla re-introduction. There are now estimated to be over 100 animals in the forest; a stable breeding population that is doing what boar do best, routing through the forest floor eating acorns, invertebrates, plants, and anything else they can find (they are pigs after all), sounds idyllic doesn’t it?
Recently a young boar wondered out of the forest and into the play yard of a local school. The beast was no doubt just looking for food but was shot as a hazard to its human neighbours. Most of us love the woods, and wild spaces, I know I do. We think of them as nice safe places where we can re-connect with a sanitized, non-threatening form of nature but are we prepared to share the space with 100kg of bristled swine. With no natural predators left alive in the UK the boar of the Dean are at the top of their little food chain and could potentially continue to reproduce and build their numbers as long as food is plentiful. Already local land owners around the forest are becoming concerned because their chrysanthemums are being routed out by animals emerging from the woods, and of course there is always the fear of a boar/human confrontation. Wildlife, even in the animal friendly UK, will only be tolerated up to the point where a single human might be threatened. It has been suggested that some management is needed, a hunt perhaps, we can’t have these animals overpopulating and threatening their ecosystem (and us) through their unrestrained breeding, can we?
These hundred or so Wild Boar share a piece of geography that has one of the densest human populations in all of Europe, 57million human beings according to 2001 numbers. One hundred against 57 million; I’d say given the limited space in the UK the boar may have topped out already
There are of course no restrictions on our growth, we are happily breeding and spreading about the planet. There is no wise overseer of our population expansion to insure we don’t wreck havoc on our ecosystem or threaten the other creatures we share the planet with. As long as food is plentiful we shall prosper and multiply. The only predator we need fear is ourselves.
I’m happy the boar are back, even if their environment is a somewhat artificial reconstruction of what it once was. Call them a romantic symbol of what once was, a time when the forest was held in awe and respect because it could also be dangerous. If we can recapture even a small piece of this past it will be worth it.
The Wild Boar is the indigenous wild swine of Europe. They are hairy, tusked, fierce animals; and a full grown boar weighs in somewhere between 80-100 kg. The beast appears frequently in medieval heraldry; King Richard III of England chose the Boar as his personal insignia no doubt because of its traditional reputation for ferocity and orneriness.
This reputation placed the boar at the top of the must hunt list. After all real men in the medieval world wanted to hunt something that might fight back. Hunting boar was carried out on horse back with spears and dogs, it was bloody and dangerous. There was no honour in blasting away at something with a sniper scope from several thousand yards back then. Needless to say Wild Boar have been extinct in England since the 13th Century and despite attempted re-introductions by various Kings for hunting stock the beast has not been seen tripping through the forest since the 1500’s. Of course it warmed the heart of this greenie to hear that this creature was once again to be found in English forests. Apparently a few years ago several animals escaped from a game farm near the Forest of Dean, a modest 110 km2 of mixed forest in Gloucestershire. Another group of animals may have been illegally dumped in the area as part of a guerrilla re-introduction. There are now estimated to be over 100 animals in the forest; a stable breeding population that is doing what boar do best, routing through the forest floor eating acorns, invertebrates, plants, and anything else they can find (they are pigs after all), sounds idyllic doesn’t it?
Recently a young boar wondered out of the forest and into the play yard of a local school. The beast was no doubt just looking for food but was shot as a hazard to its human neighbours. Most of us love the woods, and wild spaces, I know I do. We think of them as nice safe places where we can re-connect with a sanitized, non-threatening form of nature but are we prepared to share the space with 100kg of bristled swine. With no natural predators left alive in the UK the boar of the Dean are at the top of their little food chain and could potentially continue to reproduce and build their numbers as long as food is plentiful. Already local land owners around the forest are becoming concerned because their chrysanthemums are being routed out by animals emerging from the woods, and of course there is always the fear of a boar/human confrontation. Wildlife, even in the animal friendly UK, will only be tolerated up to the point where a single human might be threatened. It has been suggested that some management is needed, a hunt perhaps, we can’t have these animals overpopulating and threatening their ecosystem (and us) through their unrestrained breeding, can we?
These hundred or so Wild Boar share a piece of geography that has one of the densest human populations in all of Europe, 57million human beings according to 2001 numbers. One hundred against 57 million; I’d say given the limited space in the UK the boar may have topped out already
There are of course no restrictions on our growth, we are happily breeding and spreading about the planet. There is no wise overseer of our population expansion to insure we don’t wreck havoc on our ecosystem or threaten the other creatures we share the planet with. As long as food is plentiful we shall prosper and multiply. The only predator we need fear is ourselves.
I’m happy the boar are back, even if their environment is a somewhat artificial reconstruction of what it once was. Call them a romantic symbol of what once was, a time when the forest was held in awe and respect because it could also be dangerous. If we can recapture even a small piece of this past it will be worth it.
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