The sheep, cattle and horses in our fields have competition. Fallow deer are now common in the district and regularly emerge from cover in the woods to feed in the fields. Wild boar, having been released into the Forest of Dean, have spread to the fringes of the Hudnalls, and we can expect them shortly to be a factor in land management. Both formed the subject of the PGP’s Spring Meeting in March 2012.

Both species are not-quite members of our native fauna. Fallow deer were introduced many hundreds of years ago, having been present in Britain in previous interglacials, and they have long been thoroughly naturalised. Wild boar were certainly native, but the native population was exterminated in the Middle Ages and the present population are hybrids with domestic pigs though, with each year that passes, they become ever more naturalised hereabouts.

Fallow deer have become far more abundant locally than they were 20 years ago. Then, when Phil Ratcliffe, the Forestry Commission’s national deer expert, visited, he could find no sign of their presence in the woods overlooking the Wye, but now they are common. In fact, when the PGP mapped their distribution recently, using observations of residents throughout the Hudnalls, we found that they were seen most frequently about the fringes of the Hudnalls, but less often in the core, i.e., they use the woods for cover, but spread at dusk into the fields to graze. In the fields, they seem to take little herbage, though they do eat the flower heads of hogweed, but residents near the woods must have fences or conspicuous walls if they want to grow vegetables and flowers in their gardens.

Wild boar are a different matter entirely. As anyone who has driven through the Dean recently will have seen, they root up road verges and other grassland in search of food, much as they do in Continental forests. They are also heavy and sometimes aggressive animals that are less likely to run away than deer. They have been seen entering the Hudnalls area from the east, north and west, so there seems little chance that they will stay away permanently. Once established, they have the capacity to wreck fields and gardens, and embarrass local domestic pigs.

Should we be concerned? Leaving aside the pleasure and excitement of seeing large, wild animals close to home, its clear that large numbers of either deer or boar would be a serious nuisance. The deer would make woodland management, orchard establishment and gardening impossible and the boar would spoil pastures and meadows and tear up gardens. Both are good to eat, so the rational response should probably be to control populations by shooting, and ideally find some mechanism to making the meat available for local consumption.