Sunday 27 January 2008

Boar Bores?


There is a report (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3257036.ece) that in the Dumfries and Galloway region of Scotland people are paying large amounts of money to shoot 'wild' boar that are driven towards them (whilst they wait on 4 feet tall 'shooting stands') by dogs. The shooters apparently find the boar more exciting than pheasants. The meat finds a local market being much more 'gamey' in taste than traditional pork. As the boar are no longer regarded as indigenous mammals, it is legal to kill them and it is also lawful to use dogs under the 2004 Hunting Act so long as a maximum of 2 are used at any one time. The British boar (http://www.britishwildboar.org.uk/profile.html) are powerful animals (they can be up to 190 kg with sharp upper tusks up to around 15 cm long). They can (and do) easily kill a dog and can seriously injure a human bystander. Although the locations are protected by electrical fences, it seems only a matter of time before these intelligent animals re-introduce themselves to the wild (as they have already done in southern England). They could prove very damaging to the landscape, crops and the nests of ground-nesting birds.

No comments:

A New Type of Money Laundering?

Thames Water is the UK's biggest privatised (thank you, Mrs Thatcher!) water company, with around 15 million customers. All such water...