Forest of Dean Wild boar Population : Is the research data correct?

[thomas]

But they will not do that as people will know how much they making by shooting them poor little piggies

I'm taking an educated guess here but I would suggest FC boar sales wouldn't make much of a dent in the operating costs / wages of their rangers.

 

[Sharpie]

From the Dean Verderers, a while ago:

Boar are now interacting with people on a regular basis throughout the Forest and some dogs have been injured or killed although there have been no injuries to people other than to a man trying to feed a large boar by hand while a child hit it with a stick. A significant and obvious issue with the boar population is damage to amenity grassland, verges and gardens in both FC and private ownership. There is also an issue with the damage to fences allowing access and associated damage to tree crops by boar, deer and rabbits. Numbers of road casualty boar have increased (10 in 08/09). Without control, there is the potential for boar to have an adverse effect on flora (e.g. the bluebell carpets) and fauna (potentially including European Protected Species such as dormice or the ground nesting birds such as wood warbler which are so important in the Nagshead SSSI). Control of individual problem animals has been undertaken, and the Dean population has become increasingly nocturnal and more shy of people although they are still regularly seen by forest users.

,Tourism ? Join a syndicate with some sort of expectation ? IDK. They need controlling and somebody has to do that. Not the amateurs.

They are all descended from an outbreak in 2006. There were none there before. Plus maybe some intermingling with domestic pigs. They are not natural nor an ancient population. Just a recent thing, maybe 14 years in the making.

Boar became feral in the area after some escaped or were released from a farm near Ross on Wye in 1999. In Autumn 2004 a group of about sixty farm-raised boar were dumped near Staunton. Some turned up in the main block of the Dean in Spring 2006, probably individuals deliberately moved from the Staunton population

Unlike my (used to be) East Sussex population, that escaped from Hans Rausing's enclosure at Peasmarsh , next to Paul McCartney's estate. during the storm of 1987, a genuine accident. I had only just moved down here, and was not at all clued in to the natural picture, nor had made any connections. Polish descent. They prospered mightily, a friend even took out a 250 kg one from the Woodland Trust estate that he managed, took a lot of chainsawing to get a telehandler in there to extract it, time was of the essence He did say to me that it was a very stupid decision to shoot it, but he cleaned it up, and did it correctly. I've seen the photos. They are pretty much all gone now, except in certain places which I will not disclose.

Others will be far more clued up on this than me

 

[sikamalc]

I well remember attending a meeting outside Maidstone many years back organised by the then fledgling NGO.
This is where I first met Derek Harman the author of the book Wild Boar in the UK. The story so far.
His associate at the time claimed to have shot the first Boar in the UK since medieval time.
Most of his research was in Beckley Wood. Owned by the FC.
At the time the government had just finished research on the Boar distribution across the UK. Undertaken by I believe a recent university graduate.
He claimed there were less than 100 Boar UK wide.
At the meeting we attended a TV was produced with a VCR. Derek had been filming the Boar on the Kent Sussex border. He had feed points.
There were at least 30 to 40 Boar on the film taken. Therefore the government census was way way off.

Since this time the numbers in the area have crashed. Mostly due to indiscriminate shooting and hunting. Sometimes by our traveling community.

The way it's going Boar will not survive much longer down here. I believe the west UK population has been decimated to a point of extinction. But some one may know better?

 

[Sharpie]

His associate at the time claimed to have shot the first Boar in the UK since medieval time.
Most of his research was in Beckley Wood. Owned by the FC.

Those would have been from Hans Rausing's outbreak. And yes I can quite believe that one of them was the first ever shot, in the wild, since whenever.

My friend managed a Woodland Trust forest not far away, and worked very hard at it, saving up the money (he got to keep that, part of the deal, his services for free), which he put to good use to get educated at college as a mature student. He used to take out at least 200 fallow/year, plus the boar (as many of those as possible, all sizes, all year round). The deer were under a management plan, the boar were basically to be eliminated. Not wanted. He had a pretty good go at trying to do so, but didn't entirely succeed.

Don't know where the West country population came from, or when, or for that matter in other parts of the UK, or even if they are genuine rather than say rare breed pigs bred back by natural selection over a few years in the wild, looking somewhat similar to a boar hairy etc.) but certainly when I took up stalking my guide (Devon based) used to have a regular "moon shoot" i.e. under the light of the full moon, of the nocturnal ones that he baited in under his high seats, with good success. I don't think he does that any more.

 

[JTO]

I'll say nothing on that. The problem with conservation bodies that have a big public profile is that they are often economic with the truth.

The RSPB comes to mind. They employ contractors to control Corvids with a condition that all evidence is destroyed, so I'm told.