Wild boar

Wild boar are held in high-regard across Celtic and European folklore as both symbols of courage and important ecosystem engineers. They plough up soil to create new opportunities for wildflowers, invertebrates, and birds to thrive.

Taxonomy chart

Animalia – Chordata – Mammalia – Artiodactyla – Suidae – Sus – S. scrofa 

Conservation status: UK Red List

GB:  Data deficient

England: Data deficient

Scotland: Data deficient

Wales: Data deficient

Global: Least Concern

Summary

Habitat: Rivers and wetland, coastal & marshland.

Size: >200cm in length, tail of 15-40cm. 

Weight: males up to 200kg.

Lifespan: Live up to 10-15 years in the wild, can be around 20-25 in captivity.

Conservation concerns: Wildlife-human conflict. Wild boars in the UK are currently from feral escaped populations and are being culled. 

Terminology 

Sow: A female boar. 

Farrowing nest: Nest built by sows in which to give birth. 

Sounder: A group of wild boar that contains adult sows and their young. 

Geography 

In the British Isles, boar from escaped populations are now living in several areas, including most prominently in the Forest of Dean, but also in parts of South East and South West England, South East Wales and North West Scotland. 

Wild boar favour both broadleaf and coniferous woodland, but they can also often be found near farmland. In parts of the world, wild boar can even be found living in cities. 

Biology 

Wild boar can grow to more than 200cm in length, with a tail of 15-40cm. They can stand up to 80cm at the shoulder and weigh between 60-100kg, though some males have been known to weigh more than 200kg! 

Covered by a coarse coat, wild boar have a mane of bristles extending from their neck to the middle of their back. They also sport a large head, a long, narrow snout , short legs, and small ears. Males are larger than females and grow tusks when they turn 2 that protrude from their mouths. Females also have tusks, but these are not as visible. Piglets have longitudinal ginger-brown and cream stripes across their body for camouflage and are known as ‘humbugs’ because of their stripy coats. 

Wild boar can live up to 10-15 years in the wild, though in captivity this can be up to 20-25. They begin to breed in autumn, between October and November. Pregnancy lasts 115 days and females give birth to litters of 4-10 piglets on average in a special farrowing nest, which is usually a mound made from vegetation.  Piglets remain close to the nest for 4-6 days before rejoining the sounder. They are weaned between 3-4 months old. Male piglets will leave at around 1 year old to become solitary, whilst females either stay with the sounder or move to find their own territory. Sexual maturity is usually reached around 18 months, but males usually don’t breed until 4-5 years of age due to being outcompeted by other males. 

Ecology 

Wild boar are largely herbivores. They mostly eat herbage, roots, bulbs, seeds and fruits, but can also eat young mammals, invertebrates, eggs and the chicks of ground nesting birds. In the summer, they favour a variety of broad-leaved grasses, and when they are near agriculture they will sometimes eat crops such as sugar beet, potatoes and maize. Wild boar depend on the masting of both beech and oak trees to survive the winters. 

Wild boar are known as ecosystem engineers due to the way they root for food, which creates disturbance by ploughing up the soil, creating new habitat for seedlings to grow in as well as burrowing opportunities for insects. This rooting can also disperse seeds as well as expose seeds and invertebrates to birds such as robins, creating new feeding opportunities for other wildlife. In addition, wild boar have been shown to disperse fungal spores in their droppings. In the summer, wild boar create mud pools to wallow in, which creates new habitat for aquatic invertebrates and plants. There are even some theories that the UK’s abundance of bluebells is due to the absence of wild boar – bluebells are a dominating species, so the lack of soil ploughing allows them to colonise woodlands. When boar are present, the disturbance allows other pioneering species of wildflowers to grow, creating woodlands with a higher diversity of wildflowers. However, wild boar can also cause damage through this rooting by disturbing vulnerable communities of rare plants and mature trees, especially when in large numbers. 

Conservation 

The re-emergence of free-living wild boar in Britain was not a planned event, and thus they are still listed under Schedule 9b of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (as amended) Variation (England) Order 2010, which means that release into the wild is prohibited without a licence.  Boar are also listed under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976, which requires a license from Trading Standards if it is to be kept in captivity, including on wild boar farms. Therefore, any reintroductions need a licence for holding animals in captivity, and a further licence to permit their release. 

Wild boar is not currently listed in game legislation and therefore there are no formalised legal requirements covering the use of firearms or closed season. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) have adopted an advisory minimum calibre in recent years. 

History 

Wild boar have been in Britain since the last ice age – some estimates say there could have been as many as up to one million boar in Britain during the Mesolithic period. However, boar were extirpated in Britain as a wild species around the end of the 13th century, with the last individuals believed to have been in either the Forest of Dean or the Forest of Pickering.  

Boar were an important species for hunting, and there are records of a number of attempts at re-establishment within hunting preserves and parks. It is generally accepted that free-living boar were completely absent from the UK from the end of the 16th century. In the 1980s, wild boar farming increased, leading to an increase in escapes from these farms. By 1998, there were viable populations of free-living wild boar in the British countryside.  There has been debate as to whether wild boar should be considered native or non-native. 

Wild boar have appeared in folklore across centuries and cultures. Both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon helmets have been found bearing boar-head crests. It’s believed that the Celts used the wild boar as a symbol of war, but that the boar also represented fertility, wealth, fearlessness, spiritual authority, stubbornness, strength and courage in Celtic mythology.  

Throughout history, stories of boar share similar themes. For example, the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis, sent a gigantic boar to ravage the countryside and punish King Oineus, and heroes from throughout Greece had to be summoned to hunt it down. In the Mabinogion, Culhwch had to shave off the beard of the giant father of his beloved, Olwen, to win her hand. But the beard was so tough that in order to do so, he had to slay the wildest boar in the land and use its sharp tusk. To cut the giant’s hair, Culhwch also had to prove himself by retrieving scissors from between a king turned into an irate boar with poisonous bristles. More recently, boar are depicted as guardians of the forest in the film Princess Mononoke, where a boar forest god rampages through villages when humans are trying to harm the forest. 

Identifying and surveying 

Footprints: Wild boar tracks are distinctive looking as they are hoofed, and only deer species have similar shaped footprints. They are up to 7cm in width but can vary in size. There can be some confusion between wild boar prints and sheep and goat, particularly in farmland habitats. Unlike the tracks of other even-toed ungulates, it is the dew claws, which in soft ground are impressed even when walking slowly, that serve to identify wild boar tracks. 

Uprooting turf: A distinctive field sign left by wild boar where they like to uproot grass verges in search of worms and bugs to forage upon. 

Surveying period: All-year round. 

Confusion species: None.