British pig hunting comeback

LONDON - Wild boar are to be hunted again in England, some 300 years after they were rendered extinct here.

Hunters will be allowed to shoot the boar as game in a change to the law designed to control burgeoning numbers of the animals. About 500 wild boar and feral pigs are rooting around in the undergrowth. Many have escaped from farms, while others were released by animal rights activists.

Ministers fear their numbers could swell to the thousands.

The Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs plans to allow landowners to invite hunters to shoot the animals, which can weigh up to 400lb. Under the proposals a wild boar season would run from March until August to allow sows to rear young.

Wild populations of boar and hybrid feral pigs are established in woodland in Kent, Sussex and the Forest of Dean. There are also wild boar roaming in Dorset and Ross-on-Wye. But the population is relatively small, compared with other European countries, because less than 9 per cent of the UK is covered by woodland, the boar's natural habitat.

In much of Europe wild boar are an important source of shooting sport's revenue. Germany has about 600,000 of the anmimals.

- INDEPENDENT