Rewilding Britain With Feral Pigs

a reply to: johnrobca

Thank you for your informed reply.

It is obvious as you say the problem has been manufactured. This is the first time I've heard it said plainly the FC caused it by restricting local management. It is very telling that you as a resident call it a problem, and also you would object to a large scale cull.

If you'll forgive my moment of madness, I have been to the forest to speak with The Pig Spirit and this is what The Pig Spirit told me.

The Pig Spirit spoke. Pigtopia. . .

The pigs of The Forest Of Dean wish for the entire forest to become a pig themed park called Pigtopia. Everything pig related. No eating pig products. The motto is - 'All True Animal Lovers Come To Pigtopia'.

I pointed out that at the present rate of reproduction their combined body weight would be heavier than the Earth by tomorrow. The Pig Spirit spoke again. Piggy monasteries.

Don't blame me for this, I'm just repeating what the Pig Spirit told me.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

You'll know, I expect, of the problems encountered when attempts were made to feed contraceptives. Impossible to match dose to bodyweight and non-target species consuming leftovers. Trapping and relocating is possible. Many will injure themselves, some terribly, in traps. But it is possible.

Fencing a relocation enclosure would be a mammoth task. Buying an island might be cheaper.

The best I could come up with is a quantity of robust enclosures, each able to be moved by hand. Then a labour intensive system similar to the old method of folding sheep with hurdles. The pig folds could be moved across bracken covered land, preparing it for tree planting. Bracken is a menace brought on by industrial, profit-driven farming practices.


This is a view from 1936, and it's got a lot worse since then.

It is, during the last century, but more particularly in the last fifty years, that bracken has become a serious national problem.

There is some truth in the saying that " Bracken is heir to the Crofter," for bracken was once under control. Rights of bracken cutting were sometimes attached to leases, so it must have had value. The long underground stems were used for thatch, and the fronds for litter. When the Highlands were more densely populated, the crofter kept the pest from his arable ground and probably cleared some of the pasture. Moreover, he stocked heavily, and his cattle not only ate the young fronds-but broke and trampled the mature fern. When crofting gave way to capitalist sheep-farming bracken came into its own, for sheep are too light to injure the plant and will eat it only under stress of starvation.

Few species of plants are better fitted to oust the occupier and possess the land than bracken. It can grow in shade or sunshine, but it prefers the well-drained sunny slopes, and it thrives in the pockets of good deep soil among rocks and crags where it is most difficult to eradicate. Though it produces innumerable millions of spores from the under sides of its fronds, it marches onwards chiefly by the forward thrust of underground stems, or rhizomes, which may vary in thickness from a lead pencil to a walking-stick. It truly possesses the land, for Pro- fessor Hendrick of Aberdeen has weighed fifty tons of unwashed and forty tons of washed underground stems from an acre of bracken. This is equivalent below ground to a very heavy crop of mangolds or swedes above ground. Although the rhizomes are food for the Maories of New Zealand and for the Japanese, they seem never to have been human food in Britain. . Cattle, .pigs and poultry will eat the washed or ground (-i.e., milled) rhizomes, but their food-value is too low to make their collection profitable. Pigs root them up and eat them with avidity and will soon clear a small fenced area.

. . .

Experiments made last year with an Autogiro specially fitted for spraying proved, however, that if bracken can be eradicated.. by spraying with sulphuric acid it is quite feasible to use an Autogiro for the work. This sounds promising and may solve the problem of the steep mountain-sides where no implement can be worked and to which no liquid can be carried, but where there are many ledges and pockets of what was originally good grass land.

. . .

This national attempt will be watched with hopeful interest, but the greater regions which • arc inaccessible to mechanical cutters must wait for biological control or the development of aeroplane spraying before the bracken is beaten back to its eighteenth-century ranges.

archive.spectator.co.uk...

Spraying sulphuric acid from an Autogiro. What fun and innocence back in 1936. Compared to that using pigs seems sensible.

I've heard of two attacks that were both the same technique. The pig bowled the dog along "like a football". No biting or slashing.

One notorious incident was said to have been started by the dog cornering the pig for twenty minutes before the pig had enough.

I wouldn't be surprised if you drive as slowly as I do through the forest. Especially at night. 300kgs is a lot of pig to collide with.