Crashing boar

While we are all worrying about the threat to poultry from an alien virus which has now reached these shores, there seems to be little concern at the threat to our countryside and livestock from an alien animal now roaming free in England. I am referring to wild boar, hundreds of them, which are inhabiting forested areas of Kent, Sussex, Dorset and Gloucestershire, having escaped from farms and bred in the wild. If nothing is done about them, there could be many thousands of wild boar in 20 years’ time, marauding through woodland, threatening walkers, destroying crops and pasture, and spreading diseases — swine fever, bovine tuberculosis — to domestic pigs and cattle. The spread of avian flu may be easier to contain than the proliferation of these dangerous wild beasts.

I know there are those who welcome the reintroduction to this country of what they call an indigenous species. In fact the native wild boar became extinct in Britain about 800 years ago.