HOW TO SEE BOAR
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You can watch wild boar quite safely in the Forest of Dean. Try in the woods between the Sculpture Trail starting at Beechenhurst Lodge and the Go Ape site; goape.co.uk/ locations/forest-of-dean-beechenhurst.
Your best bet is to go in the late afternoon or dusk and walk along one of the logging tracks. Take extra care if you have a dog and let it off the lead. There has been at least one instance of a dog being fatally injured by a wild boar, but the dog attacked the boar first. Boar breed mainly in the spring time, and some reports suggest you shouldn’t get between a sow and her piglets. Never feed the boar. This is likely to make them less afraid of people.
LEFT Ben Locke, a wildlife photographer and wild-boar fan based in the Forest of Dean, with his dog Tiger
A photographer and cameraman, Ben has also witnessed the waxing and waning of the boar debate. Should they be in the Forest of Dean at all? Are numbers too high, or too low? Are they a danger – to children (no), pets (aggressive dogs, possibly) or well-tended gardens and prized lawns (guilty as charged).
Ben says he’s bored by the arguments now. “Occasionally, I get rung up by a local newspaper editor who says they want to do a piece on the pros and cons of wild boar, and I just say no,” he says. “It’s all rather academic now.”
There is still a lot of debate, however, over just how many there are in the forest and what impact they have. The Forestry Commission currently puts the population at around 1,200 animals, considerably lower than the 1,635 estimate of 2018. Commission rangers cull the boar in order to keep numbers down.
But David Slater, a former volcanologist who set up the Friends of the Boar website and has campaigned against culling, says his research suggests there are unlikely to be more than four boar per square kilometre in the forest, which would give a total population of about 400. Coincidentally, I assume, the commission’s stated policy is to reduce boar numbers to 400.
There’s also widespread disagreement about their impact. David’s in no doubt that their