I'm Scared to walk in the Forest anymore - I'm a prisoner in my own home!

Look out for the following article in The Review (Forest of Dean local newspaper) this week.  A response to all the many letters to the press over recent months from those who love the Forest but seem to be scared of the boar.  Many letters came from people claiming to have lived here for many years.  You'll get the idea even if you never saw the letters in question.  We wondered if some of the letters are a joke, so we thought would should agree... in kind....

Times are getting harder and with austerity measures on the way I had decided to forage for free food in our verdant and fantastically biodiverse Forest that we all love.  Herbs have always been a passion to me, and it is about time we all stopped calling them weeds (although some can be smoked) for they may save us all in the future. 

My first outing was for nettles to make some lovely hot soup, but was soon ruined by a ladybird that came whirring down onto my hand from nowhere. Startled enough, this voracious commy-red killer of aphids began to walk up towards my eyes and I had to start running in the hope the breeze I created would blow off the unwelcome pest.  But in my agitated state, adrenaline soon took over every muscle fibre and sinew in my body and I banged my head on a tree. I had to spend the night in the Dilke (I think). 

Hungry, I excused myself the following morn from the bed of the strangely delectable Sister and went bravely forth once again into the jungle.  It wasn’t long before I heard the scary sounds of tweeting swallows, swooping with what seemed like malicious play directed just at me.  I got the hump for sure, for they were very fast fliers and could only worry at the prospect of a child being hurt if one were to fly in the child’s eyes.  I pulled myself together and with the warrior skills gained only from watching video games, I got past them when finally I spotted some juicy looking nettles. 

Can you imagine my disgust when I saw that they were surrounded by bracken!  I had to quickly suck back my drools, for those who may not know these are seriously carcinogenic plants, second only to Taxus baccata (or Yew to none Foresters), and some spores may have fallen onto the nettles, and even swirling about me poisoning my air and by now exposed spit (I was never good at sucking back spit strings, as my younger sister can verify). 

Disgusted, I widened my search and saw a flutter of tasty looking nettles by an erect stand of towering conifers.  But as I approached them I heard a loud and menacing bark from the dark recesses of what turned out to be Tolkeinesque wildwood, with its towering and vaulted trees that reminded me of a past I wanted to seriously forget – as a child I was forced into church by Arkela and I am now mentally scarred.  But instead of having to sing hymns, I was frozen solid at the thought of a huge fallow deer bellowing his trumpet at me, as if Armegeddon’s apocalyptic horses were upon me, all tooled up with huge antlers and ready to charge into battle.  I somehow managed to unfreeze myself and returned home intact but in need of my expensive medication – at a spiralling yearly cost of £40-50,000. 

I have written to the Forestry Commission without response.  It seems to me that if we don’t round up all the animals into enclosures, and fell all the trees and burn the bracken, nobody will want to walk in the Forest for much longer as it’s becoming too dangerous for those with a keen wanderlust to explore the heritage we have on our doorstep, especially dog-owners.



Sometime in the future...."Don't touch! You may get a splinter." This forest is too dangerous for our children.



I’ve also written to the Council and Highways suggesting that once all the trees are gone they could pave the Forest over and thereby creating jobs, especially quarrying.  Paved roadsides would stop the boar from digging them up, and the burning of the trees may literally generate green energy to combat global warming.  This would ultimately make finding my nettles and other delicious wayside weed, umm herbs, much easier. 

It would be like the old pre-Napoleon treeless days of smog-ridden valleys and iron mines.  I’m not an extremist and would be happy for a bit of bare earth to be left exposed and routinely rotivated for the nettles and other herbage to grow in (yes, I know turned-over bare earth offends a few), and I would even be happy that no signs be erected to warn me about the dirt or the danger of being stung by a nettle.  We Foresters know all too well about the dangers here and tourists would just have to accept the risks or go back to their towns.

In my care of these patches I would even graciously donate a few ultra-violet lamps to illuminate those patches of weed so that more people may enjoy the sight of them, especially at night.  Information boards may be erected in due course and a line of coloured posts directing you to the organic “sculpture” (a bit like the 33rd degree Freemason’s pyramid, but useful, attractive and longer lasting). 

In my utopian high of a better Forest for all, I pondered even more the advantages it would bring.  Counting the boar would be easy and we would no longer have to believe the high priests of Bank House anymore as we could all see the truth for ourselves, before we rounded them up into enclosures of course (I mean the boar, not the FC, although maybe the FC would feel safer in there too).  Indeed, the Forestry Commission’s job would be easier and affordable until all the logs to build cabins ran out. 

Maybe some people may not like what I suggest, but it is surely time to stop appeasing these bunny and tree huggers and let the Foresters have their Forest back as it was in the good old days of wayside herbs and Warren James, with all it’s pestilence and poverty to keep us on our toes.  Keep the dream.  Come on, it’s nearly Christmas when we all think Santa has something to do with Jesus, so nothing is impossible.   Don’t let the rantings of the few ruin it for all.  Get educated about our Forest and its rich herbage.  Long live the Forest and all that dwell in her.



"I didn't scare them off, it was you!"  "No it was you!"





DJS

WILD BOAR CULL STATISTICS - the proof of mismanagement

It had long been the opinion of photographers that the boar numbers claimed by the Forestry Commission did not match what was being seen within the Forest of Dean. 

A model of population wasn't realised until early 2010 when photographers suddenly began seeing lots of boar, especially mothers with piglets.  It seemed that now everyone was getting photos, whereas pre-2010 it was very definitely a difficult task.  Sightings dropped again by the summer, then late in 2010 and early 2011, something very strange started occurring.  Roadside were being grubbed up like never before and piglets were everywhere.  How had we gone from low numbers of sightings in 2009, with just a modicum of roadside grubbing, to what we were witnessing in early 2011?

The Forestry Commission pounced on this and became ever more insistent that numbers were rising.  They began to cite the roadsides as evidence, as well as begin to publicise cull figures:
April 2008 - April 2009 = 38 animals,
April 2009 - April 2010 = 62 animals,
April 2010 - April 2011 = 122 animals

These were published in the proposed 2011 Management plan along with definitive and unquestionable population numbers. What was interesting was that the numbers culled each year became harder and harder to achieve, until in 2011 the FC announced that they had not achieved their target (150 animals).

Targets were simply calculated by subtracting 90 (a number that the Council wanted to survive) from the FC's total population figure.

On first glance it may appear that increasing numbers of culled boar meant an increasing population.  This also tallied with the ease at which photographers were tracking down the boar from 2010, especially at certain times of year.  But this didn't make sense when the FC could not achieve their cull targets despite the ever rising estimates of total boar - now put at 350 and probably more.  By April 2011 they had killed 122 boars leaving 228 and probably more still roaming.  But 228 boar was about the population size estimated for the previous year (2010) when the FC managed to cull 1 in 4 boar (62/250).

It all became clear when Friends of the Boar were given, via freedom of Information requests, the cull data from the Castlemain depot - the only larder to take culled boar in the Forest of Dean.



Wild Boar cull data 2008 - mid 2011. Click to enlarge.


When the weights of the animals are plotted against time a trend becomes clear of a slow decrease in the average weight (or age) of the population.  In 2008, the average weight was 61kg, but by summer 2011 it was just 41kg.  It had gone from being that of an 18 months old animal to that of a 9 months old animal (a halving of age).

This was the linear trend.  The best fit regression line (shown in red), which tracks some seasonality, predicted even worse to come with a dramatic fall off at the end of the line.

This data was seen by hunting organisations and journalists, with the Guardian in particular very interested.  They contacted scientists and boar experts for their input, with the opinion being that the management of the boar was dangerously flawed and culling is being based upon a poor guess at population.  Many hunters were also outraged at what was occuring.

Our hypothesis was that the FC were now in their second year (at least) of over-culling.  Not by a little bit but decimated by a large margin, which accounted for seasonal difficulties in seeing any boar. 

One problem inherent with over-culling, and the more rapid the worse it is, is the population rebound theory put forward by many mammal ecologists.  It states that sudden increases in nutrition favour stronger mothers and healthier young - youngsters more likely to survive any hardship early in life (cold weather and starvation produce high mortality in natural systems).  What is more, some mammals seem to react to stressful depopulation by actually producing more young in a drastic effort to compensate, and often overcompensate, for the sudden loss of friends and family.  Also, when their young are killed, mothers can come straight back into season to produce yet more young!  Hunting can create a vicious cycle, and promotes the problem that hunting often proposes to solve - over-population.  It is a hunters dream!

The above graph was worrying and we awaited further data to see if the hypothesis remained true.

Wild Boar cull data 2008 - Sept 2011. Click to enlarge.

We shared our findings with the FC in person and in our management plan response in late August with an urgent call to stop culling and implement a closed season.  Rather than consider us, the FC immediately went "all-out" to achieve their cull target in a record breaking time. They also achieved it at the very worst time - when there should have been no killing (closed season).  It appeared personal.  

Their cull target had been achieved this time, and just 6 months. 

April 2011 - September 2011 = 153 animals.

The FC gloated and publicised their achievements everywhere, obviously wanting to be seen as saviours and good managers hoping we would go away proved wrong.  We wrote to the press to highlight at just how belligerent the FC were now acting and what they had just done may prove very serious indeed.

The remaining cull data came in.  Apart from showing an increase in road traffic accidents (due to increased panic from increased hunting? And with those boars being added to the cull target), and killings made disproportionately close to houses and amenity areas, the final data fitted precisely with prediction.  The average age of the boars now stands at just 32kg - a piglet - with stripes!  The red line did not thankfully continue downwards but can now be seen to agree with the linear trend.

Downward spikes can be seen each year.  These represent the onset of killing piglets in late summer.  These piglets belong to first year mothers who typically give birth at this time so as not to compete with the main birthing season in March.  Look carefully and we find that the start of this season has been moving earlier each year.  This is totally consistent with new research from Germany showing how hunting disrupts natural birth patterns (with hunters continuing the myth that boar breed all year round - what they don't say is this only occurs when they are hunted!  This is how game managers farm their animals in order to produce "sustainable" populations.  Farmers also kill newborns or remove them from mothers to increase "productivity").

Look even more carefully at the downward spikes and you see a rising slope with time (2009-2011).  This proves the FC begin killing piglets at dependency (<10kg) and throughout their infancy.  What is more, a higher slope can also been seen (especially 2011) that tracks the growing mothers.  The mothers are now so young when they give birth, they too are still growing quickly.  The parallel lines proves mothers and their piglets are often slaughtered together on purpose (and cannot be welfare cases).  This may be due to 2011 being the year of the tame boar.  The tame sows were young mothers, maybe just 7-8 months old.  The reason they are so young is due entirely to Population or Compensatory Rebound Effect - orphaned piglets come into season much earlier.

Tame boar, road accidents, and boar near to houses (with the assumption many of these were reported by concerned residents to the FC) is probably the reason why the FC managed to achieve their target in half the time (and cheaply too).  Killing boar is getting easier because over-culling is producing younger and less-experienced boar who do not run from humans or roads.  Increased numbers of piglets in early 2011 is now explained, and why they dug up so much of our road verges - they didn't know the dangers yet!

The very strong conclusion is that the FC are mismanaging the boar in a seriously dangerous manner and with belligerence and total disregard for boar welfare.  Compensatory Rebound is definitely in action.  The FC have been given the data but choose to ignore it.

Another conclusion is that the sudden increase in sightings of boar from early 2010 onwards was not a product of more boar, but increasing numbers of sows and their pigets becoming less inclined to run away.  These sows were probably young orphans left to fend alone after their mother was shot.  From 2004 to mid 2009, sighting of little piglets was very rare indeed.   Young mothers were slowly, but surely, created via the compensatory rebound mechanism (earlier fertility) and couldn't pass on any experience to their piglets to run from people (and/or become nocturnal) because there had not been enough time for their own mother to drill this survival strategy home.  This is a trend that has continued to this day.  Why? Because the FC continue to slaughter mothers and young piglets (evidenced in graph, especially for 2011), leaving any surviving piglets to die, or if lucky and fit (which they are in the rebound model), the piglets grow up with little experience of how some humans love to inflict fear and suffering upon wildlife.  This is something that Defra does not give guidance on.

These graphs do not expose a couple of other important underlying issues here, and these will be discussed later in another posting.  Maybe you can work out why digging roadsides always occurs in the Autumn when acorns are at their most plenty?  You may also ponder if these graphs give any insight into the boar NOT in the data, eg poached or organised shooting victims.

We know that Messrs Stannard and Harvey read this blog.  You need to end the hunting culture within your walls and start to manage.  We understand you may be constrained by whatever Defra is telling you, but please study the data again and take note.  There are more important things here than profiteering from the meat sales and inflating the future "value" of the forest to private investors and shooters.  You are very welcome to add your comments below, and maybe we can finally start to work together for the future health of boar and the Forest.

DJS

BOAR CENSUS PROVES LOW BOAR NUMBERS

The blogspot has been quiet for a week or so now, but doesn't mean we've been doing nothing for the wild boar.  In fact November has been a very busy month for us, and we feel we have done quite a lot in hopefully securing a better future for the wild boar as well as getting some quite significant sectors of the community up to speed on the science and local politics surrounding the boar here in the Forest of Dean.

To keep this topic manageable, we want to give you all some information on the now well publicised census that the Forestry Commission have been undertaking.

Friends of the Boar met with Forestry officials in the first week of August to discuss with them directly our concerns with their proposed "Feral Wild Boar Management Plan 2011-2016".  Amongst other things, we outlined to them the dangers, both past and future, if the FC continued to cull wild boar without any clue as to the population.

Please note, that at this time the FC did not accept they did not know population numbers.  We knew they didn't know, but they had up until then successfully hidden this fact from the public, the media and most importantly from local Councillors from whom they had previously sought consent for their cull targets.  The FC were adamant they knew the population, but we nevertheless managed to get them to agree to a "wild boar census".  Not only that, but they also agreed for an independent observer to attend the census as suspicions were already too high as to the impartial nature of the FC towards the boar.

(It turns out that a "wild boar census" per se was never on the cards, but was to be part of the yearly deer census as an add-on observation - or just another column in the spreadsheet).

In order to keep up the pressure for the FC to keep their promise we contacted the Guardian newspaper about our concerns, and they wrote a good article about the FC's lack of knowledge on boar numbers.  The Guardian interviewed FC officials and from this the public were finally told the truth about the matter.

During our discussions, we discussed the last wild boar census the FC undertook.  They told us they used Thermal Imaging, but although they believed it works fine for deer, it was not so good for wild boar.  They had undertaken multiple transects at night during their yearly deer census (2-3 weeks long) and found that the boar numbers were far lower than expected.  We were surprised, and on pressuring the FC to give us a figure, they said approximately 30 boar had only been seen.  Since the FC had given assurances to the world that the population was 200 and rising (with figures as high as 700 even being quoted from Mr Stannard in the press), it could ONLY mean that the method didn't work (knowing the answer before the experiment is not science but dogma!)

We suggested they had just proven our contention that boar numbers are actually much lower, approximately 100, maybe as low as 50!  They disagreed, but they did agree to do another census, but it WOULD NOT be using Thermal Imaging but instead NIGHT-scoping using infra-red telescopes and high-powered lamps.

Their (poor) explanation of lack of boars found was due to vegetation.  For some reason, they believe wild boar hide behind thickets at night, whilst deer stand up and be counted!  This is despite the FC's explanation that low daytime sightings (used by many photographers as an argument to suggest low numbers) was due to the boar becoming active only at night!  Talk about contradicting yourself!

The idea that Thermal Imaging doesn't work was also backed up by another FC staff member during a personal communication, who claimed that one night a boar had a radio collar attached, so they knew its location just a few metres away, but the camera couldn't see it.

THIS YEAR'S census started on the Halloween night (31st October).  As before, it was the usual yearly deer census that was occuring but with any boar also being noted down.  This began AFTER the Autumnwatch piece (see previous posting) when we see the FC out with Michaela Strachan using Night-scoping on what the public were meant to believe was a genuine census night!  Caught out again Mr FC - faking a census, not to mention the baiting they used to draw some tame boars in front of the cameras.

The independent observer took part on the second transect, 3 days after the census began.  Each transect is 3 days apart, lasts 8 hours, and was to continue up until Christmas.  However, the method had reverted back to Thermal Imaging!  The observer confidently assures us that NOTHING could be missed, even IF vegetation was in the way (anyone see the news when Thermal Imaging was used to "see" the Bank protesters INSIDE their tents on the steps of St paul's cathedral?).  Indeed, the Thermal camera even found a tiny muntjac fawn, just days old, curled up in dense vegetation that night.

The observer saw no boar that night (6pm - 2am), and was told none were seen the previous night.  Friends of the Boar attended a meeting with the FC and Police on 22nd November to be told that no boar had yet been seen on the census (approximately 9 transects across 2/3rds of the Forest).  A police officer confirmed this because he was an independent observer on one of the last nights.

Question 1.  Do ALL the boar, who are now nocturnal according to the FC statement on the Autumnwatch article (go see for yourself - link to piece in a post below), hide perfectly behind what scant ground cover we have here (bracken, bramble and some low hung conifers), without a tail or nose poking out?  There are a few dense stands of bracken about granted, but are we really supposed to believe all 350 boar nervously run into these small and very fragmented areas of cover when the FC drives by?

Or could it be, that statistically, there are very few boar here?     IF there are 350 boar in the FoD as the FC contend (or 4 boar per square kilometre), then it seems statistcally unbelievable that none have been seen on several very long night-time surveys using state-of-the-art hardware.  If there are 50 boars, then it may be that the FC are just unlucky at finding some.

Question 2: Why did the FC change their minds about using Night-scoping, reverting back to Thermal Imaging when they already had reservations about that method?  Could this be because we showed them scientific evidence that Thermal Imaging DOES work and is vastly superior to Night-scoping (Focardi et al, Wildlife Society Bulletin, 2001 vol 29, pp133-139).

Are they seriously attempting to steer us all into thinking that nothing works so we have to revert back to their guesswork which will continue to promote the falacy that they need to keep increasing the hunting pressure (and financial incentives) each year?

Question 3:  Why, in both The Forester and Citizen newspapers today, does Ian Harvey state that this years' census is the first time they have used Thermal Imaging.......

"Forestry chiefs have admitted their wild boar census is showing there are far fewer animals than previously thought.  Chief wildlife ranger Ian Harvey said "We are not seeing the numbers we had anticipated.  But I'm fairly ambivalent about that because this is the first time we've approached this using this system".   The Citizen Nov 24th 2011.

Caught out yet again.  This is at least the second time this method has been used, so the FC MUST believe in it along with the scientists.  It works for deer, including tiny little ones about the size of a cat hidden motionless in vegetation.

It appears to us that the FC are persistent in attempting to decieve the public over numbers of boar to the extent they will ignore scientific sophistication to justify their own prejudice and are determined to carry on intensively hunting the boar FOR PROFIT until they are extinct or in such a stressed and diseased state that they will die off naturally.

"I think everyone is in agreement that we need...to get an estimate but this method won't necessarily be the one we use in the future."    Ian Harvey, The Citizen Nov 24th 2011.

The FC are playing games with your mind as well as endangering the health of domestic animals and the farming community here by encouraging a disease outbreak and/or a mass exodus of boar out of the forest onto farmland and into towns.

The FC have allegedly stopped the census (so the papers quote) and will resume it in January when there is less vegetation.  This tells me that the only vegetation of concern to the FC is bracken and bramble, and not conifers.

Since the Thermal Imaging cameras they use is very sophisticated Military equipment, I must now reassure all terrorists around the world that they should cover their houses and caves over with bracken or sleep under a bramble bush if they want to remain invisible from the search helicopters and spy satellites of our 21st Century military superpowers.

Keep coming back to the blog, there is much more to report and we hope to bring it to you very shortly...

DJS