Wild boar hunting is back in Britain after a 400-year absence, the government said Wednesday.
The government sanctioned a selective cull in certain regions to keep numbers from getting out of hand, The Times of London reported.
While the last native wild boar "reputedly met its end on the hunting lance of King James I," the animals have made a comeback in Kent, East Sussex, West Dorset, the Forest of Dean, Dartmoor and other parts of Devon, the newspaper said.
The animals generally pose little threat to humans unless a sow thinks her piglets are threatened. Farmers, however, worry wild boar spread foot and mouth disease and classical swine fever.
Estimates of the number of wild boar in Britain range from 1,000 to 5,000, the newspaper said.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International
Related stories:
Britain may reintroduce wolf and lynx
A British wildlife group says wolf, lynx, beaver and wild boar could be brought back to live in the wild without posing a threat to people or the environment.
Michigan wants hunters to shoot feral pigs
Feral pigs have become such a problem in Michigan that the state Department of Natural Resources has asked deer hunters in 51 counties to shoot any they see.
Pig study sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers
The earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, which many archaeologists believed to be descended from European wild boar, were actually introduced from the Middle East by Stone Age farmers, new research suggests.
Pig study forces rethink of Pacific colonisation
A survey of wild and domestic pigs has caused archaeologists to reconsider both the origins of the first Pacific colonists and the migration routes humans travelled to reach the remote Pacific.
Hey Porky Pig: You Deserve Some Respect, Expert Says
It’s the Chinese Year of the Pig, and if any animal ever needed a good PR campaign, it might be the pig. Many animal experts think pigs get a bad rap. They are often viewed as dirty creatures that are not smart and show little affection.
NJIT computer scientist audits government, hospital terms seeking errors
Some men seek rare antiques, others hunt wild boar. New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) computer scientist Yehoshua Perl, PhD, creates elegant logical structures to track down errant or misplaced medical terms. The errors creep into documents and databases developed by corporations, government agencies, hospitals and academic institutions that design, maintain and use terminologies throughout a variety of systems.
Why piglets shudder to keep warm
Researchers at Uppsala University, Sweden, have uncovered a genetic reason why newborn piglets are less tolerant to cold than other newborn mammals. It turns out that the gene that codes for the protein UCP1 was inactivated some 20 million years ago in the evolutionary line that pigs belong to. These findings are presented in the latest issue of the scientific journal
PLloS Genetics.
Cosmic Explosion Could Be Black Hole Swallowing Neutron Star
Scientists using the NASA Swift satellite have found evidence of a black hole swallowing a neutron star. The discovery is reported in the December 15 issue of the journal
Nature.