DURING a walk with my two young grandchildren near Blakeney we came upon a bluebell wood which had been turned over by wild boar. Without any bidding the children went down on their hands and knees and tried to push the white corms of the bluebells back into the earth. The children have been encouraged and guided into growing flowers and strawberries in pots and they wanted to preserve the bluebells. Unfortunately there is little chance of their own children enjoying the vision of the bluebell woods in flower if the boar are allowed free range.

The fact is, according to my Handbook of British Mammals, that native wild boar became extinct in the 16th century. True wild boar are widespread in many countries such as France, Hungary, and Switzerland.

In the last century some were re-introduced into Southern England and reared by farmers for sale to restaurants with novelty menus.

In deciduous woodlands between West Sussex and Kent some were either released or escaped. As the sows normally produce six piglets every three months they now have extended their range from East Kent to West Cornwall.

It would be a good problem for maths teachers to put to their students the number of boar that could be ploughing up the Forest in two, three, four years assuming an estimate of two hundred sows at present were allowed to reproduce freely.

This is a national problem, as without intervention they will spread far and wide and do enormous damage not just to the bluebell woods but also to agriculture, gardens and recreation fields.

It is surprising that Peter Kendall, the President of the National Farmers' Union has not taken this up with Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), which seems always to dance to his tune.

I heard him on the radio last week describing what a hard job he'd had convincing ministers of the need to cull badgers.

This cull, in effect, amounted to target practice as it is totally impossible to calculate a total of 70 per cent.

I have in the past worked with Adrian Bailey of the Field Studies Council, a nationally-recognised expert on badgers.

In a survey in Shropshire of setts in a wide area we could calculate the number of these setts that were occupied from a number of clues, but the number of occupants was totally impossible to ascertain.

So the target of 70 per cent is absurd. If one wanted to know whether any of these dead badgers had TB and whether this matched the particular strain of TB that had infected local cattle the opportunity provided was ignored. It simply required taking a blood sample.

Setting targets for wild boar in the Forest according to a percentage kill rate is equally absurd as the boar will move around, far and wide. The situation is that decisions need to be taken by Defra from scientific evidence, whether to tolerate the boar or remove them.

In my opinion the final decision should be guided not just by Peter Kendall who leads the most powerful lobby in the country but by all of us, democratically, as there are ethical, aesthetic and economic considerations to be taken into account in making a policy decision.

– Roger Horsfield, Bream.