CALL FOR INCREASED CULL OF WILD BOAR

Just as we were all relaxing after the last cull, the usual suspects are calling for an increase in cull numbers of boar.

After a successful year-long period of no hunting between September 2011 to September 2012, the Forestry Commission decided to vetoe the Boar Scrutiny Meeting's findings and went all-out to secure a bag of 100 boar for themselves.  This has been outlined previously, but in essence the Forestry Commission came to an agreement with Friends of the Boar, Martin Goulding and the Verderer Ian Standing to continue the closed season until a new census had been undertaken.

It was remarked at that meeting that over the year long peace, boar sightings were down, as were complaints and even the boar diggings.  Waiting a few more months for a better census to be undertaken seemed appropriate.

But the day after the meeting, the Forestry Commission went ahead with a cull of 100 animals between September 2012 and January 2013 with no such census.

We had just witnessed a very peaceful forest with little diggings from the boar.  On exactly the 1st September 2012, hunting began and boar instantaneously came back into villages and began to dig at the roadside verges again.  This is precisely what Friends of the Boar had predicted would happen and we were right.  it is now a pattern of behaviour that we cannot ignore.

We warned of more problems if another cull were to take place, and of course it did.  From September 2012 until early March 2013, roadside diggings and digging at picnic sites resumed.  The Forestry Commission killed 78 boar plus another 25 boar killed by other non-speciefied means in the space of 5 months.  If our estimates of population were correct this amounted to a 50% loss of boar. 

The spectre of population rebound may still be felt if it were not for a huge toll on piglets over this harsh winter, with many sows losing all their litter or presumably aborting due to the lack of nutrition available this winter (due to both recent cold and a poor acorn / nut harvest in the Autumn)

The prolonged cold spell plus the diminishing extent of suitable shelter due to tree felling has resulted in many sows losing theor piglets or aborting them.



The culling halted in January 2013.  What happened next was a repeat of the aftermath of the last cull.  Diggings at roadsides continued for 2 months and then stopped.  It is now difficult to see a boar or new roadside / village diggings.

What is so frustrating in our fight to stop the needless and unscientific culling is the severe lack of knowledge about the boar.  This lack of knowledge underpins the calls for culling based upon nothing other than opinions about road diggings.

Here is some facts about road diggings.

It takes only 1 adult boar to dig up many square metres of soil in one night.  If the digging is along a road a single boar may have dug along 5 miles or more of verge, possibly more.  If this happens in the winter months when the grass is not growing, the exposed soil remains for maybe 4 or 5 months.  The nightly addition of diggings over the winter months can result in what seems to be total destruction of some road verges.  The fact is that this digging could be the reselt of very few boar.

By the end of the winter after many frosts and much rainfall, the diggings have slumped into small mounds and eventually the grass will begin to grow back through.  In the next month or so, by late April or May, the roadside will once again be verdant with new grass growth and hopefully new flowers hitherto dormant in the compacted and neglected roadsides and woodland rides.

Ignorance is the greatest weapon against the boar.  The Forestry Commission are actively promoting press attention at the moment here, reeling off their usual mantra of populations doubling (it used to be a trebling) and an inflated population estimate of 600 boar or more, based upon no evidence whatsoever.

Yes, the Forestry Commission undertook a secret night census recently (March 2013), claiming to find 30 boar in one night.  Friends of the Boar did the same, in the very same area, and found just 7 boar.  That is, 7 boar in an area of 2 square kilometres.  This area is known to be a hot spot for boar due to its quality of shelter for the boar.  What we are confident of is that we did not count the same boar more than once!  It was undertaken during the time that many sows were having piglets and so this figure is a maximum and not some average.  

Maybe by extrapolation, the Forestry Commission are happy to decieve the public once again by stating half-truths about doubling numbers, but we are not.

There is no need for a cull.  There is no evidence of booming numbers and no evidence the boar are affecting other animals.  We will provide this proof when appropriate.

Sow having a scratch in the snow, March 2013.  This mature sow had no signs of having had piglets.



As an aside, it was amusing to read in a local rag today (11th April 2013) that many people are in support of an increase boar cull because of the mess the boar make.  In the same issue was a story of a lady having to be rescued by the Fire Service after she became stuck up to her thighs in the mud left behind by Forestry Commission operations!  How so very true.  The Forest of Dean is currently in a digraceful state thanks to tree felling - and from what we can see this is NOT felling to combat Ash dieback or Larch infection, but felling of healthy oak and spruce.

There is an urgent need to highlight the hypocrisy.

DJS

WILD BOAR LIKE FROGS!

It's been 9 years since a (still) unknown person released approximately 60 wild boar into the Forest of Dean in November 2004.

Over these years, both professional and amateur conservationists have speculated upon the potential problems that wild boar may create with regards a few species of animal and plant.

First was the worry about wild boar digging up bluebells here in the Forest of Dean, a location that shows off an amazing spectacle of these endangered plants each year in May.  But as always, it isn't just the experts that speculate, because as soon as a potential problem is mooted in the local press or on an equally ill-informed social networking forum, the public who do not like the boar are quick to condemn.

Friends of the Boar would like to assure its followers that we do not jump to any conclusions without first considering facts and published scientific evidence.  In the case of bluebells, what seemed a plausible concern, after 9 years of close observation, we can conclude that bluebells are not under any threat at all.  In fact recent research in 2011 by Defra confirmed that wild boar do not threaten the bluebells (Harmer, Straw and Williams, Royal Forestry Society Quarterly Journal of Forestry, July 2011).

And then we have had some concerns from Butterfly Conservation regarding wild boar digging up larval food plants of several species of butterfly, the most prominent of which are wood white and grizzled skipper.

But Friends of the Boar are not complacent in this research either, and we have spoken to a few branches of Butterfly Conservation that have both these butterfly species and wild boar on their reserves.  To date, it would seem that wild boar have had no detrimental influence on these butterfly species, but may in fact be enhancing the populations.  The Sussex branch of Butterfly Conservation have been in contact and they say that they have been holding both Wild Boar and Grizzled Skipper walks in a local woodland for some years now, and there has been no noticeable affect upon the butterflies.  Our local Gloucestershire group also say that although research is ongoing, to date no evidence is forthcoming on the detrimental impact of wild boar upon butterfly populations.

Sadly, here in the Forest of Dean we are now hearing from a new group of amateur reptile and amphibian recorders from GlosARG who are calling for a "management" (a.k.a. cull) of wild boar on the grounds that the boar destroy amphibian and reptile habitats, and more astonishingly, they claim that the eating of frogs, snakes and lizards by wild boar will endanger them!  Any good biologist would call this the food chain.

We have asked the founders of this local amphibian and reptile group for the evidence of how boar are detrimentally affecting herpetile numbers, but they have responded with simple quotes from "authorities" such as Wikipedia that boar eat frogs, etc. and adders need help!

Frogs breed prodigously and amourously because they are predated.
As a general rule, the more offspring an animal has is a response to the harshness of it's environment.

For snakes such as the declining adder, they are claiming it is prudent to cull boar in such a way that achieves some notion of "balance" within nature.  What and who decides this balance isn't proposed, but there is an assumption that the claimant is happy to play God in formulating such a "balance".

We feel that playing God by any individual is not the correct way forwards.

There is actually a scientific paper that addresses predation of American herpetiles by boars (D. B. Jolley 2010 et al., Journal of Mammalology, 91(2):pp519-524).   It studied the stomach content of feral American boar and showed that boar do indeed eat lots of frogs (spade frogs) with less than 10% of the boars' herpetile consumption being anoles (non-venomous tree snakes) and other herpetiles.  Anecdotal evidence suggest that boar sometimes "hunt" spade frogs emerging from winter burrows.  Maybe true?

But we are concerned with UK boars and how they inter-relate with other animals here in the UK.

Nevertheless, there is now another voice with an emotive and unscientific judgement call to cull the boar. They believe in pre-emptive strikes upon boars and attaining some mythical "balance" between species is called for, and they are promoting this vague viewpoint to the local press and other wildlife enthusiasts (all part of their publicity campaign).

Little do they seem to recognise that a multitude of other predators also eat frogs, reptiles and snakes, including some endangered raptors such as Goshawk.  Furthermore, the complications rise (with artificial management) when one considers that snakes eat frogs too, not to mention other endangered species such as water voles.

What is never highlighted in such predation studies (including even boar predation by wolves) is the obvious fact that stomach contents can be derived from scavenged animals too - the frogs were already dead when eaten!  No good scientist utilising "stomach" evidence of a predator or omnivore will ever claim it proves predation of living animals!  When did you last eat a live cow or live sheep - but your stomach may well have a lamb chop or steak digesting within!

Friends of the Boar have witnessed many times newts and frogs thriving in woodland puddles and even wild boar wallows!  Many amphibian species can walk many hundreds of metres in search of new habitat.

Below are photographs of such a boar wallow with frog spawn.



Frog spawn in a wild boar wallow, March 2013.
Wild Boar are engineers of biodiversity and ecological balance.



A wild boar had wallowed in this puddle in the last few hours, with some spawn splashed outside the wallow.  We observed that the boar had not eaten all the spawn, if any.  There was no other pond or water body for maybe 1 mile away. 

In conclusion, wild boar may very well eat newts, frogs or snakes but does that make those populations threatened?  Are they eating dead herpetiles in preference to live ones?   Evidence is required before any claim to cull the boars even if the self-styled Utopian vision is a "balance" for nature.  We need quantitative evidence that includes reptile populations pre- and post- boar arrivals and qualitative evidence that boar take significant live animals or adversely affect habitats.  We don't believe this evidence exists yet.

Perversely, however, the wild boar can be proven to create entirely new habitats (a pond or even just muddy ground) for some herpetile populations to thrive, in this case the common frogs' survival and dispersal. 

Can the boar also achieve some redress to any species population currently overpopulating an environment, given that boar and many other predators have been absent for hundreds of years? 

How difficult is it to propose that soil mootings of boar create dark patches of warm dark earth exposing invertebrate food sources for herpetiles and also help to warm snakes before a hunt?   Has anyone out there any evidence of this?

David J Slater



TURF TEAM - Still in Operation!

Friends of the Boar have been out and about over the last 4 months actually meeting with real people who have requested help with boar damage to their gardens.


We now have a team of about 12 people who will happily visit you if you have a problem with the boar, and we will talk to you about how to possibly prevent a recurrence.


Obviously, we will listen to people's views about the boar and respect them.  Not everyone's cup of tea to have boar outside your house, but we have found that a reassurance on the unlikeliness of any aggression from the boar is welcoming.


Our list of people helped include several individuals, but also Drybrook Rugby Club, The Rising Sun public house in Moseley Green, and Joy's Green Parish Council.


Allied to this, we have given talks on the subject in the efforts to spread real information and talk about our experiences when out looking or photographing the boar. 


We really want to meet people out there rather then just communicate in hyperspace!


We have had some offers of support and we hope to get some community involvement soon too in helping us repair damage.


If there are any groups out there who would like to participate in helping repair damage to gardens, meet us, and in the process do a little conservation help for the boar please let us know.  It's really not that difficult to repair the grass.


Here are a few photos of projects to date:

Private garden in Pillowell Village, repaired and assistance with boar security.

Drybrook Rugby Club, grass banks and roadside repairs.

Private garden near brierley in middle of forest.  Paths and repairs to garden.

PLEASE NOTE - we have been told by a Highways spokesman that we cannot repair roadsides even if we wanted to, so sorry about that.  And before you ask us to repair picnic sites or any other bit of public forest estate, please understand that this is just not feasible for such a small group of volunteers, but we will always try our best.  Our focus is on private gardens for the time being.

Thanks for your support in advance,