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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: January/February 2007

Boar panic grips Great Britain

 

LONDON--"Police in Fife have issued a warning after a wild boar escaped from the abattoir in St Andrews," BBC News reported on November 28, 2006. "The public has been urged not to approach the animal, which has large tusks and teeth and may attack if it is cornered or threatened."

In truth, any pig can deliver a bone-crunching bite, and any frightened boar or sow can become deadly.

But the BBC warning was relatively understated compared to much recent Fleet Street hyperbole about feral European boars.

Anonymous activists claiming affiliation with the Animal Liberation Front in December 2005 released more than 100 European boars from a farm at Exmoor, then released 45 of the boars again after they were recaptured. British news media have tracked the boars' movements ever since as if reporting about an invading army, and have amplified--and perhaps sensationalized--reports of feral pig actiivity abroad.

For example, Guardian Berlin correspondent Jess Smee reported on November 29, 2006 that "A pack of wild boars, trying to escape from hunters, stormed two small towns in Bavaria, biting people, knocking down a cyclist and running amok in a boutique. Fifteen boars caused damage worth several thousand euros in Veitshöchheim and Margetshöchheim. Three of the pack were shot by police. Two others were run over."

Alleged fellow Guardian writer Harry Pearson a few days later, "At Changi golf course in Singapore they have had to post warning signs after a pair of 400-pound wild boar took up residence in the rough. In Malaysia, jungle pigs are considered a bigger menace to golfers than poisonous snakes or crocodiles. The porcine onslaught is also reported in Sweden, Canada and France. But it is in the U.S. that feral pigs have carried out their greatest terror campaign against the creeping menace of golf."

Doug Moe of the Capital Times, in Madison, Wisconsin, traced Pearson's claim about a "porcine onslaught" against golf back to a hypothetical remark by a rural Wisconsin legislator whose antipathy toward feral pigs is actually rooted in his experience of pigs doing crop damage to farms.

Elizabeth Nash, Madrid correspondent for The Independent, was a bit more restrained in reporting on November 26, 2006 that "The boar has come down from haunts in the mountains northwest of the Spanish capital to roam the leafy avenues and walled mansions of Madrid's high-end suburbs. Despite their fearsome tusks and grumpy character," Nash stipulated, "boars are not aggressive unless wounded or provoked."