wild boar

[moonwood]

does anyone else have wild boar in their woods?boy can they dig,only seen them once as normaly when we arrive they push off due to family noise. found a nice grass snake though

[mikepepler]

[tracy]

Hi Moonwood

yes, we have, lots of them judging by the dug up field next to the woods!

Sadly we found a dead one too. You can see photos of it here:

http://peplers.blogspot.com/2008/04/shed-building-and-dead-boar.html

We have some pretty big holes in the wood from their digging and can see many piggy prints on the mud and near our pond. Any apple cores we leave are soon eaten!

Like you, we have yet to see them, but many local people report sightings.

I hope you managed to get a picture of your grass snake!

Tracy

[tracy]

I received an email from Julie Dendy, if you are in Sussex and are interested please contact me or Julie, thanks

She said

I am a research scientist at CSL (a scientific agency of DEFRA) and am involved in a number of projects investigating various issues regarding British wildlife. We are currently in the planning stages of a research project to evaluate the impact of wild boar on the biodiversity of woodland habitats and to develop methods to estimate population densities. Currently we are in the process of setting up a small pilot scheme to study a number of related factors particularly numbers of insects, plants and small mammals. In order to obtain this information we will need to find a number of local woodland sites and identify areas where we can deploy small pitfall traps for insects and locate suitable transect positions for assessing plant abundance. We will need to mark these locations using either sticks or paint spots on trees as we need to revisit the points around 4 times a year. In order to correlate results with boar populations we will also need to determine the size of the local population by density estimates based on local activity signs and possibly night counts at baiting points using thermal imaging equipment. In order to achieve this researchers will need to make regular visits to the sites mostly during the day but some night work may be required. Timings of all visits will be organised well in advance so notice can be given. Obviously good access to the site is a crucial factor and the majority of the work will be carried out on foot but vehicle access may be needed if large areas are involved.

I am contacting you, as a local landowner to ask whether you would consider your site suitable for our project and would be interested in allowing us to carry out part of the work on your land.

(I then emailed her to ask about privacy - that we probably would not be interested in supporting something that might lead to a cull. She replied...)

Regarding your other questions none of the areas where we work will be individually identified so there will be no issues with owners privacy. All the results will be accumulated and the reports will refer to the general situation in Sussex woodland areas. We are also going to work on local areas which do not have wild boar populations to compare the biodiversity. (This will test the opinion that boar activity increases biodiversity within an area). We are only there to monitor the signs of boar activity and count where possible, none of it involves work directly with the animal itself ie there is no trapping or tracking of the animals. The project is DEFRA funded and as such the results and reports are fed back to them. However the project is to provide them with information on the related fauna and flora within the habitats and is in no way linked to policies on population reduction or culling.

I hope this has answered your questions so far. We are meeting next week with the plant, small mammal ecologists and entomologists concerned to discuss and plan the next steps. I will be in touch following the meeting with further details.

Many thanks for your interest so far and I look forward to working with you in the future.

Best Wishes

Julie

------------------------------------------------------------

Julie Dendy Phone: +44 (0)1904 462000

Wildlife Biologist/WEMB GTN: 5129

Central Science Laboratory Fax: +44 (0)1904 462111

Sand Hutton Email: [email protected]

York YO41 1LZ Web: http://www.csl.gov.uk

Mobile 07990785770

[tracy]

We finally have a video of wild boar in our woodland!

Not great, we need to lower the camera, but we are excited!

http://peplers.blogspot.com/2009/08/wild-boar-video.html

[tracy]

Thanks to the RFS for this update:

What to do about wild boar

As part of the Defra Wild Boar Action Plan, the Deer Initiative (in collaboration with

Natural England and BASC) has published six free best-practice guides with the aim

of improving management of wild boar, a species that is becoming increasingly widespread

in English woodlands. Download them from www.wild-boar.org.uk.