You can have enough of wildlife when it's big, hefty, weighs about 300 to 500 lbs., can run fast and is an omnivore. It does like forest mast such as acorns, beech nuts, berries; but also field mice, young pheasants and other ground-nesting birds, and doesn't despise rabbits and even carrion. It is, of course the wild boar. It is also partial to such farm crops as potatoes, sugar beet, and with its snout, it roots them out in long furrows. There have been and may still be, on this side of the Border, a farm or two of boars - the meat is preferred by some to pork. A butcher spoke of Armagh as a source of supply. The meat is in huge demand in France, and the Field brings the surprising figure of 1,000 wild boar farms being established in that country in the past decade. And still demand outstrips supply. Then France has her free-roaming boar, which so excite her many hunters. An authority on the animal is quoted as saying that there are an estimated one million of them in the admittedly large country, and now 300,000 are shot by the chasseurs every year.
The British came to boar farming somewhat later, but now there are, apparently, 150 such farms. But in Britain, too, there have been escapes, and Kent, Dorset and East Sussex woods have the boars breeding in the wild. But it's probably still only in hundreds that they are reckoned. The normal litter is half-a-dozen, but there may be as many as 15. Still not sufficient to cause widespread havoc, but a little is probably enough. The Field tells us that "the UK is unique in Europe for being the only country in which wild boar do not officially exist in the wild. Add us in the Republic to that one. The man who wrote this is Keith Taylor, director of the British Wild Boar Association and he concludes his article by stating that moves are afoot under Article 22 of the European Habitats Directive to allow reintroduction of four mammals - wolf, brown bear, lynx and beaver. And from that he declares: "It may be difficult to refuse the wild boar citizenship for long."
How many Irish voices would be raised in favour of any of those four, never mind the wild boar? Now that's a question that didn't arise in the recent campaign for the European election. Mind you, it's a handsome enough beast, the boar, but we've enough on our hands.