Wild Boar in Kent

[santaman2000]

In Europe though!? Biggest I've seen was 92kg and I wrenched my back lifting my end! A few weeks later, I returned and came back home with about 12ft of smoked sausage. That 527kg beast must have taken about 4 men to lift!

I think European boar are a different kettle of fish...

If it is feral (descended from escaped domestic stock) its potential size would only be limited to the genetics of the original breed escaped and the available food source. i assume domestic stock there is large and food stocks plentiful. At any rate the one I linked is rare and the average is indeed around 80 kilos.

The one linked required a front end loader to move.

 

[santaman2000]

What may appear to be destructive is also very beneficial for the area. They dig up soil, eat, poop, stomp it in thus adding good nutrient to the soil, making the soil mare capable of supporting more growth, it levels the playing field as far as plants are concerned, the dominant plants will have been knocked down a peg or two and other plants can get established. So increasing soil fetility and biodiversity can never be a bad thing. Even if it means an area gets "devastated". It'll have grown back better in no time.

Nature never creates something without reason.

Not if they eradicate the native species, plant and animal; especially ground nesting birds and snakes. That's what commonly happens with feral hogs; or when any invasive species is introduced.

 

[Geoff Dann]

What may appear to be destructive is also very beneficial for the area. They dig up soil, eat, poop, stomp it in thus adding good nutrient to the soil, making the soil mare capable of supporting more growth, it levels the playing field as far as plants are concerned, the dominant plants will have been knocked down a peg or two and other plants can get established. So increasing soil fetility and biodiversity can never be a bad thing. Even if it means an area gets "devastated". It'll have grown back better in no time.

Agreed, but...

Nature never creates something without reason.

Nature continually creates things without reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)

What do you think your philtrum (the two ridges on your top lip) is for? Answer: it isn't for anything; it is an accidental byproduct of the way a human face is created in a developing foetus. There are some even more obvious and extreme examples in humans, but they are XXX-rated.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Not if they eradicate the native species, plant and animal; especially ground nesting birds and snakes. That's what commonly happens with feral hogs; or when any invasive species is introduced.

Wild boar are native to the UK. We hunted them to extinction a few hundred years ago.

 

[HillBill]

They were native to here before we killed em all. So technically they aint invasive. Can't see them wiping out entire species though. Its all a matter of scale and perspective. What may seem bad in one area will have benefits later down the line. Natures timescale and ours are 2 very different things.

Not if they eradicate the native species, plant and animal; especially ground nesting birds and snakes. That's what commonly happens with feral hogs; or when any invasive species is introduced.

 

[santaman2000]

Wild boar are native to the UK. We hunted them to extinction a few hundred years ago.

Fair enough but in those few centuries the landscape has changed a good bit hasn't it? Do you think it could survive re-introduction.

A bit more extreme an example would be could the Earth as we know it survive re-introduction of sabre tooth cats? Mammoths? Dinosaurs? After all, they were all once "native" species.

 

[HillBill]

I would say that there is a reason for all things in nature, even if we cant see what that reason is at this time. The link you posted mentions things from a evolutionary biology perspective, yet evoloution is a theory, nothing more, so we cant use that to say something is created without reason, for how do we "know" anything based on a theory.

The philtrum has a reason, like you say its part of the way the face is created. Without it would our face be created the same?

Agreed, but...



Nature continually creates things without reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)

What do you think your philtrum (the two ridges on your top lip) is for? Answer: it isn't for anything; it is an accidental byproduct of the way a human face is created in a developing foetus. There are some even more obvious and extreme examples in humans, but they are XXX-rated.

 

[HillBill]

How could the earth "as we know it" survive even the tiniest introduction of an extinct species? The very act of creating an extinct species automatically changes the world "as we know it" I doubt the earth ever gets through a day without changing somehow

 

[widu13]

Plenty of boar in East Sussex. They can be nasty though. I remember being on stag on Ex in Germany about 3am one morning and being chased up a woodpile by a boar- it had come to me, not the other way around! I had the last laugh though as I gave it a good 1/2 mag from ye olde LMG (7.62); well kind of the last laugh as we were on Ex and I only had blanks...and I got a slap for waking everyone up.

 

[santaman2000]

How could the earth "as we know it" survive even the tiniest introduction of an extinct species? The very act of creating an extinct species automatically changes the world "as we know it" I doubt the earth ever gets through a day without changing somehow

True enough but you get my point. Especially when talking about pigs. As has been pointed out by others, they're highly adaptive and inteligent; they'll outcompete most anything else; rather like the Grey squirrel is doing (only as I said they'll also take down unrelated species) I'm not sure the locals really want to see that happen on a large scale.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Fair enough but in those few centuries the landscape has changed a good bit hasn't it? Do you think it could survive re-introduction.

It hasn't changed that much, no. The cities have grown, and a network of motorways has been built (blocking animals paths), but the there just isn't enough land in the UK for it to have changed that much since wild boar were wiped out in the 16th century. Most of the bits of the UK that were farmed or forested then are still farmed and forested now. And most of the other flora and fauna is also the same, albeit with a few notable destructive invaders like mink and japanese knotweed.

I think the natural habitat of wild boar in the UK would see a net benefit from their re-establishment, for reasons already explained by other posters.

A bit more extreme an example would be could the Earth as we know it survive re-introduction of sabre tooth cats? Mammoths? Dinosaurs? After all, they were all once "native" species.

Sabre tooth cats and mammoths would pose no danger whatsover to the rest of the ecosystem. It is them who would be in peril, which is why they aren't here now.

Dinosaurs would have even more trouble. Their immune systems would be 65 million years out of date and their biology would be adapted to a world with a significantly shorter day length. T. rex, which was a scavenger, would starve to death quite quickly unless there was a decent supply of giant vegetarian dinosaurs, and there simply isn't enough vegetation on the Earth at the moment to sustain a population of giant vegetarian dinosaurs.

Also...when we talk about "native British species" we are specifically referring to the flora and fauna which re-populated these islands after they were covered with an ice sheet which obliterated everything in its paths. The ecosystem of the UK started almost from scratch 10,000 years ago. Anything that was here before the ice came cannot be considered native.

 

[multi]

Ithink some places here have culling seasons on wild boar

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-16630895

An example

Also read this

http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/regulation/wildlife/species/wildboar.aspx

 

[Geoff Dann]

True enough but you get my point. Especially when talking about pigs. As has been pointed out by others, they're highly adaptive and inteligent; they'll outcompete most anything else; rather like the Grey squirrel is doing (only as I said they'll also take down unrelated species) I'm not sure the locals really want to see that happen on a large scale.

There isn't much for them to outcompete, apart from badgers, which survived quite happily with them before the boar were wiped out.

 

[santaman2000]

There isn't much for them to outcompete, apart from badgers, which survived quite happily with them before the boar were wiped out.

I wasn't speaking neccessarily of "direct" competion. Rather the species they'd decimate by consuming them; snakes, other reptiles, ground dwelling birds. They may have co-existed before but I expect not in the numbers you currently have. At any rate aren't some of these species (I believe the adder is one?) currently facing problems enough without re-introducing another threat?

 

[santaman2000]

It hasn't changed that much, no. The cities have grown, and a network of motorways has been built (blocking animals paths), but the there just isn't enough land in the UK for it to have changed that much since wild boar were wiped out in the 16th century. Most of the bits of the UK that were farmed or forested then are still farmed and forested now. And most of the other flora and fauna is also the same, albeit with a few notable destructive invaders like mink and japanese knotweed.

I think the natural habitat of wild boar in the UK would see a net benefit from their re-establishment, for reasons already explained by other posters....

You might well be right. I had thought that some of the current habitat (heaths and heathers for example) were newer than that.

 

[multi]

I wasn't speaking neccessarily of "direct" competion. Rather the species they'd decimate by consuming them; snakes, other reptiles, ground dwelling birds. They may have co-existed before but I expect not in the numbers you currently have. At any rate aren't some of these species (I believe the adder is one?) currently facing problems enough without re-introducing another threat?

Everything is buggered in england. Introduce boar, not humans I say.

 

[santaman2000]

...Dinosaurs would have even more trouble. Their immune systems would be 65 million years out of date and their biology would be adapted to a world with a significantly shorter day length. T. rex, which was a scavenger, would starve to death quite quickly unless there was a decent supply of giant vegetarian dinosaurs, and there simply isn't enough vegetation on the Earth at the moment to sustain a population of giant vegetarian dinosaurs.

Also...when we talk about "native British species" we are specifically referring to the flora and fauna which re-populated these islands after they were covered with an ice sheet which obliterated everything in its paths. The ecosystem of the UK started almost from scratch 10,000 years ago. Anything that was here before the ice came cannot be considered native.

True enough. It was meant to be an extreme example of bringing back successful predators to a world no longer equipped to co-exist.

 

[lannyman8]

we had wild bore down Worcester way when i lived near there, the biggest was almost the size of a chest freezer until the snipers put a 50. cal round through it, it was living on the range woods destroying the range most nights... it was a good shot from around 1000m with NVTS....

wild bore for ages in the freezer.....nom nom nom....

 

[Geoff Dann]

I wasn't speaking neccessarily of "direct" competion. Rather the species they'd decimate by consuming them; snakes, other reptiles, ground dwelling birds. They may have co-existed before but I expect not in the numbers you currently have. At any rate aren't some of these species (I believe the adder is one?) currently facing problems enough without re-introducing another threat?

You can count the native British reptiles without running out of fingers. There just aren't enough of them around for wild boar to have a serious impact on their numbers. There may be a problem with some ground-nesting birds, but none that I'm aware of.

The biggest ecological problem we have in the UK (apart from those directly caused by humans) is the lack of predators, resulting in a deer and rabbit population that is pretty much out of control. The deer strip the woodland of vegetation. The rabbits (which aren't native to the UK - brought here by the Romans, native to the Pyrenees) undermine whole hillsides.

 

[Geoff Dann]

You might well be right. I had thought that some of the current habitat (heaths and heathers for example) were newer than that.

The heather landscape of Scotland is largely man-made, rather than natural. I think that is what you are referring to. Without continued human intervention, most of it would revert to forest. We tend to incorrectly think of the highlands as natural wilderness. It has also been shaped by some pretty nasty politics and big money. There is very little pre-human-arrival natural habitat remaining anywhere in the UK.