Trust's concerns with control of wild boar

4:47pm Sunday 5th February 2006

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A WARNING has come from the Fordingbridge-based Game Conservancy Trust that if wild boar are allowed back into the English countryside, after an absence of 400 years, their numbers will have to be controlled or they will overrun the countryside.

The trust's director of policy and public affairs, Dr Stephen Tapper, said Defra was currently carrying out a consultation on what should be done about the increasing number of wild boar roaming the countryside.

The Game Conservancy Trust is monitoring the situation and is worried that Defra appears to think the population has not grown much over the past decade and that the damage caused by wild boar is "more or less tolerable".

Defra said losses could be compensated for through hunting.

Dr Tapper said: "We are not so confident. In most European countries wild boar numbers are burgeoning, even in the face of heavy hunting pressure.

"Defra suggests that we don't have anything like as much forest as these countries, so our populations will be much lower.

"Boar don't seem to need much forest. There is a population of between 5,000 and 7,000 living in the centre of Berlin."

Dr Tapper said Britain needed to think about damage, disease risk to farm livestock, traffic accidents and whether we really wanted to see the return of the long-lost native animal.

"The romantic notion that we can return all our native animals, whether they are boar, beavers or wolves, is appealing but does it make sense?" he said.

"Wild boar were hunted relentlessly by man and wolf and later by man alone. If we bring them back, we will certainly have to be equally relentless about keeping their numbers down, otherwise we will simply be overrun."