Wild boars drop in for dinner

Wild boar. Photo / Thinkstock

They are a well-loved part of Gallic folklore, but the wild boars picture-book hero Asterix loved to hunt are now invading Marseille.

The animals pose a threat to residents of the city in southern France, and officials are warning people not to feed them.

A campaign for a cull has intensified after a 24-year-old woman was bitten on the arm in a suburb of the city this month.

"Boars aren't teddy bears and it's dangerous to feed them or try to stroke them," said the mayor of the city's 9th and 10th districts, Lionel Royer-Perreault.

Hundreds of boars live in the nearby Calanques national park, where hunting is prohibited.

They have not been culled for three years and Marseille residents say the animals have started coming into outlying areas of the city at dusk, overturning dustbins and rampaging through gardens in search of food.

"It's a real invasion," Roselyne Ynesta, of a local residents' association, said. "Some people are throwing food scraps out of the windows of their flats and the boars have got used to being fed."

Another resident, Martine Leblanc, said she had to stop keeping chickens. "I've put up fencing but they just break it down," she said.

Royer-Perreault wants to let hunters tackle the problem.

"Boars reproduce very fast, and keeping their numbers down is going to be a long job," he said. "It's going to take more than the occasional cull."

Calanques park director Francois Bland said: "It's a question of public safety, but there's also a problem with biodiversity because they're decimating smaller mammals."