It is now the hunting season in France and it is to be hoped that the hunters will manage to reduce the estimated two million wild boar population.
Attempts to keep the animals away from crops and towns by agrainage – that is providing food for them in the forests – have resulted in a healthy, well fed population. It is estimated that this population can increase by over 60% each year, since measures were introduced to protect females with young. How you can tell male from female quickly enough to shoot the right sort, I don’t know. Damage to crops already costs about 50million euros annually, and these have to be paid by hunters, and it is reckoned that 40,000 traffic accidents involve wild boars. 75% of the population is concentrated in relatively few areas – I have never seen any on the Promenade des Anglais or the Croisette. In fact I have never seen any except hanging outside butchers shops.
Since French hunters managed to eliminate the last European brown bears in the Pyrenees just a few years ago, I’m sure they can make an effort with the wild boars. It’s a pity that the wolf population near the Italian border can’t be introduced to some of them. That would keep the wolves off local sheep and reduce the boar numbers naturally.
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Boadicea's Chariot 
So France wants to reduce the numbers of wild boar … and wants to protect females with young? What sort of crazy thinking is that? The best way to reduce the population would be to ensure that females with young do not survive…
I don’t know about France needing Astérix and Obélix – France needs a few lessons in Common Sense!
Boadicea: in California there are strict regulations on the number of does that people can hunt. In fact, it’s largely illegal. The problem is that there are so many well-fed, lazy deer now with an unhealthy number of fawns that make it to adulthood. Still, they recommend only shooting bucks and ignore the fact that bucks are much less a problem than the does.
It seems to be a problem wide-spread.
That said, OZ!!!! We need you!
Aw, have a heart, Sheona! Those photographs in your link are pure porcine porn. I shall need to lie down for a while, but first where did I put my fang sharpeners and passport…….?
OZ
Green loonies are green loonies the world over, unfortunately.
I have only limited experience of wild boar, although I have eaten it on occasions. The only one I have met face to face was in Germany. It came charging out of the undergrowth and knocked me over. They are rather solid creatures and it struck me as rather bad-tempered.
I think it is quite easy to tell the difference, Sheona. The adult males have tusks!
I fail to understand your problem.
The boar are protected so that the hunters will have something to hunt. What are they going to kill if you get rid of the boar?
Nobody ever kills wild creatures whilst breeding, they all have a due season when they are culled.
How many more species do you want to eradicate?
Personally I would prefer an open season on stupid people!
Boar eats very well, we used to have many south of Memphis. When an area is known to have a large boar population the more sensible slow down in their cars and do not walk their dogs in the woods!
I seriously fail to understand this need of humanity to refuse to share with other species, it will in the end be the undoing of us. We are constantly eradicating and spreading over their habitat, we are the interlopers not they!
Sorry Sipu but I’d make abortions mandatory! Two only and no IVF!
I make a point of growing native fruiting bushes for wildlife, deer have as much right to feed as I do. Fortunately most people agree round here, we have managed to keep our bears/deer/coyote/mountain lions, what we don’t want is more people.
Agree with your view on this, Tina.
The only reason that they are there is because they are hunted. If there are too many of them it is due to bad management.
Stupid.
I’m absolutely in agreement that we should create space for other species. Jolly inconvenient that this should inconvenience some but they were there first, and in this instance they were encouraged, but not controlled.
Sad.
Christina, the hunters do not seem to be keeping up with the increase in boar numbers. There must surely be a happy medium. I am very happy to see wild animals around, but 40,000 traffic accidents a year involving wild boar seems a bit high and obviously better management is needed. Deer are culled in Scotland to keep the numbers under control.
OZ, France has its own wolves who might not welcome any extra help. They are in the Mercantour, close to the Italian border, but there is a report of boar rampaging round the main street of Chambery, so perhaps the two groups are getting closer.
Blood sports are no excuse for allowing a glut of any species, including human.
More seriously though, it does seem daft to protect aggressive animal species to the detriment of local human populations. It is also ironic that this ‘protection’ allows many of them to die painfully at the hands of incompetent hunters whose only real interest is shooting at moving objects.
Janus, you are sadly right about the incompetent hunters, many of whom are more likely to shoot their fellow hunters than anything else.
I have some sympathy with your views Christina – especially those limiting the human species.
However, I have a problem with protecting animals simply so that they can be hunted – or allowing the numbers to increase to the point where they encroach on established human food supplies or cause major health problems to humans.
All native species are ‘protected’ here – croc numbers in the north are out of control and the wretched flying foxes (bats) spread some pretty horrendous diseases.
People who vote for protection for these animals should agree to live where they do damage.
Common sense approach would be to promote the boar as eating well in butchers, create a market and more would be shot.
End of problem.
On exercise in Germany once, I was returning to my tank with another crewman after and end of exercise Squadron ‘smoker.’ The commander and driver of my tank had left earlier. When they can, tank crews sleep in a bivouac slung against the side of the tank, just big enough for four people to pitch their sleeping bags, and when we reached our ‘bivvie,’ we found that it was full. On closer inspection, most of the ‘full’ turned out to be quite a large wild pig, sleeping peacefully between the other two crew members in their sleeping bags. Being young and full of ‘good cheer,’ as well as wishing to get out heads down, we thought that it might be a jolly wheeze to wake the pig and see what the other two members of the crew would do if they were woken up to find themselves in their sleeping bags with a grumpy wild pig trying to get out of the bivouac… So we got our mess tins and clattered them together outside the bivouac. The pig woke up and thrashed around inside until it finally found its way out and took off into the woods. After much yelling an screaming, the other two crewmen got outside too, to find us rolling around laughing on the ground…
All of the bumps, bruises and scratches healed eventually – those inflicted by the wild boar and those inflicted by two irate tank crewmen. 🙂
bravo you do realise pig and people taste the same? Could have had an interesting end that tale!!!
Had some friends from W Africa that told me that all pork in the markets there had to be sold with a piece of skin attached by law! Oh dear!
I read somewhere that humans were described as “long pig” in certain regions – Pacific islands, I think.