Wild Boar： ecosystem benefits and challenges, and managing safe sustainable populations

It's very much a juggling act between management, ecosystems, landowners, governing bodies, finding a balance of what's acceptable in the area, what people deem safe as well. There's a lot of politics around wild boar. My name is Warren Broad, I am a full-time deer and wild boar manager based in Gloucestershire and surrounding counties and I'm also part of the Deerbox Wild Sustainable Venison Company. We provide deer boxes in two halves. We have the deer management aspect which is all about sustainable management to improve woodlands and ecosystems. We manage a reasonable size acreage over a couple of properties in the Forest of Dean to manage and maintain the numbers of boar. There's a lot of sort of sensitivity around wild boar in the UK, you know, they haven't been here for a long time, although a native species they sort of come back in a few areas. There's very conflicted interests from landowners and people that sort of enjoy seeing the boar, others that are not so keen to see the boar shall we say. Wild boar in the UK, there are only a few pockets of them now. The areas where numbers are substantial or growing, particularly where we are in the Forest of Dean, a lot of the wild boar live on sort of crown owned land but obviously it's all public woodland, people can access it, they can walk around. We are there to try and keep everyone happy, do what's correct for the landowners, the land itself and obviously the boar. My name's Tim Howarth. I manage the deer and wild boar on behalf of Warren Broad on this property in the Forest of Dean. I've always had a keen interest sort of on the boar, their ways and sort of how they go about things but it's also, you know, in terms of management looking at impact to the woodland, impact to other species and just make sure again it's balancing limiting damage, whether it's lowering numbers or keeping the numbers as they are because we're finding that it is the right balance for the habitat and the environment we're in. Health and safety of the boar, typically shy creatures, however, where you've got to start sort of looking at signs, the boar will give you signs and time to realise that they're not they're not going to back off and usually you're in those sort of scenarios where you've got sows protecting young. So things like walking your dog off lead, the dog wanders around, the last thing you want is the dog coming across a large sow with young and you will protect those at all costs and the same goes with you walking around. Be careful where you walk in and if you do come across boar, just give them some space. That's all they are and if they're not backing off just unfortunately you may have to turn around and go back on yourself and go around. One of the most notable things for wild boar is obviously they like to turn their nose into anything and uproot it. There's quite a bit of good that the rooting of boar can do. They are known for spreading seeds and dispersing seeds, however, if they've just done that in areas where we wanted sort of rewilding and natural growth to come through and you know new seeds and new flowers, great, but they don't know the difference between doing that and going up rooting 20 new cherry trees that the forest has just planted. If you sort of allow the population to hurry and get out of control then obviously they can have a detrimental effect, their impact can be too strong and it completely sort of levels any progress with the sort of ecosystem and the flora. We're in a heavily wooded area, we're a few meters off a forestry track, we've got some lovely spring daffodils coming through. The pigs favour this for an area of each year they are rooting the ground up, upturning the soil and they are spreading the seeds further so we're starting to get daffodils develop off the track inside the woods. Instances like this, they can be very good for dispersing seeds. Some seeds they eat as well, obviously what they eat at some point is going to come out the other end. Some of them, once they've gone through that digestive system, they're still fine when they come out the other end, they're At the minute we're in a new tree plantation that the forestry team here have been undertaking. Thankfully they've put the right size tree yards on, they've got good protection around the trees but what you can see the boar have done, have come down the rows of the trees and rooted all along the soil where the works have been done. Now if these trees hadn't been protected properly there's a high chance that those boar could have quite easily uprooted those, so the money that's been spent, the effort that's been put in to try and plant this new piece of woodland is quite quickly ruined by a couple of boar just doing what they naturally do, coming along, rooting everything up. So it's again making sure you're putting the correct protection in place, monitoring the boar, hopefully trying to keep them out of the area where you can. Anywhere a boar can potentially cause conflict with something else that's either protected or work that's going on would be classed as a bit of a sensitive area, so you know it's your sort of duty of care to look after that. We are sat on what I would class as classic boar rooting. This is, as you can see by the sort of deader pieces of grass, it's not recent, this was done a couple of months ago, but it's just highlighting the sort of damage, is the term that's used, you know that they're doing to pasture land. It could be anything from grub seeds, just the grass seeds, leather jackets, anything like that. There's no, someone else might actually be able to tell me if there's a particular reason. They didn't touch this field at all last year, we've not planted new grass seed in it, we've not altered, we've not put any extensive amount of fertilizer on it, yet this year they've decided this is the one that they wanted to turn over. We are all of 150 meters from a woodland edge, a very deep valley, dense in bracken and cover, you know it's very easy for the pigs to go unnoticed in there and it's also very easy for them to push through that fence and pop into the field for an evening or two as we can see here. Managing them is tricky, it's usually long nights or long hours, usually in the cold, wet, miserable weather. No set patterns as a boar, you can find them up the road, two minutes up the road tonight and you'll find them five miles on the other side of the estate tomorrow. In our country wild boar don't have a closed season, they are not classed as a game animal in the UK, in England, and therefore the government say we're not putting a closed season on them. That obviously can be quite a delicate subject because the anatomy of animals at some point they are breeding, they are carrying young, they have got dependents, so from a management point of view we have to be very careful about when we are shooting particularly your mature, your matriarchal, your breeding sows. This time of year we're in March, very very heavily pregnant sows, if they are not pregnant they probably led in a nest somewhere at the moment with their new humbugs as we call them. So if you've gone out to manage or shoot, you know that is what we do, harvest an animal and you don't know what you're shooting and you shoot a mature lactating sow, you've left potentially six or seven dependent young somewhere with no mother to return to them. Again it's about that balance of shooting the right ones at the right time, not causing any, and the key is, unnecessary suffering. It's supposed to be quick, humane, efficient. Shooting a lactating sow and leaving dependent young is not ethical in any way shape or form. This would be sort of one of our methods of hides, viewing points for boar and boar management. For example this one's sort of what we call a low box, luckily we've got a roof on there so you can actually get in there on rainy days, cold days, whatever. Nice large field of view for the windows and what we consider as a really important criteria will be safe backs off for any shots are taken, so you've got a nice big green grass bank in the distance for any bullet stops beneath. Another of our sort of high high seat setups, this will be what we call the lean to high seat, so we're actually using the tree behind to upright the seat, gives us an elevated position to the area we're looking at. If you get the wind right, you have the wind as in you won't get smelt by the animals that you're looking for or looking at. Elevated position when it comes to potentially taking a shot, you're shooting back down into the ground rather than shooting sort of flat and with no safe backstop. This would be sort of one of the basics of camera trap system we use or trail cams as some others may call it. These spots is what obviously we monitor them from through the camera trap or the trail cam. With the boar it's difficult because there's no real patterns with them coming and going but sometimes you can get them visiting two three days on the so it's usually good that if you start establishing that pattern it might be worth just visiting your high seat and actually casting an eye yourself on what's coming and going rather than just relying on the trail cam. In night time I probably would start stalking this time of night so sorry you're five five thirty and then potentially finish my stalk into one of the high seats we've visited and seen and potentially target the hotter sort of areas that we've discussed with potentially forestry guys or other knowledge from trail cameras and camera traps. We need to keep that communication between all parties on the estate so I will sort of speak closely to the forestry team for things where they're planting, where they're harvesting, any signs that they have noticed so their knowledge is as beneficial for me in carrying boar management as possible because I can then sort of liaise with them discuss with them and target those areas that they're either going to plant young trees or they're harvesting and ideally having the boar around is not ideal. My advice to anyone who's trying to manage boar would be think sensibly about what you're trying to harvest and what you're trying to remove from the ground, engage with the oncologist, engage with the foresters, engage with the farmers, identify problem areas, identify reoccurring issues, see what can be done, look at the broad spectrum of boar management as opposed to just going out and pulling the trigger.