The Loch Ness Monster Has Company in the Neighborhood: Wild Boars

Are wild (feral) pigs an invasive species in Britain, or are they returning to places where they were native for many thousands of years - until people ate them all?

Feral pigs are far more controllable in Britain because unlike the US, English wild pigs can be harvested (killed) and sold as food for people.

The American feral pig ‘problem’ is caused by regulations designed to protect the industrial pork monopolies from competition with free-range pigs. To the extent England follows the American model by removing free-range pigs from the English diet, the Brits will also develop a ‘feral pig problem’.

NOTE: this article was originally published to NYTimes.com on August 24, 2024. It was written by Stephen Castle.

Local residents say the animals are roaming the roads and hills around the lake, tearing up lawns and terrorizing sheep.

 “Heaven” is how Peter Jamieson describes his home in Scotland, with its uninterrupted view of Loch Ness and the green hills stretching beyond, seemingly forever. But there is a problem in paradise, and it has nothing to do with the mythical aquatic monster that brought fame to the area.

Centuries after being hunted to extinction, wild boars are back, roaming the hills and roads around the lake. And so Mr. Jamieson, who lives not far from the village of Drumnadrochit, often wakes to discover his front lawn plowed as if by an excavator.

Elsewhere in the area, some farmers have been greeted by bloody lamb carcasses on their land. And drivers on local roads have encountered traveling boars, which can run at up to 30 miles an hour, according to one local resident, who said a friend’s car collided with a 132-pound animal, totaling the vehicle, as well as killing the boar.

Mr. Jamieson, a former police officer who runs a real estate business from his home, first noticed something amiss around six years ago when his lawn was torn to pieces. He said he has to patch the grass five or six times a year and is afraid to let his dogs run freely. This has brought mixed emotions.

“I don’t like seeing animals killed at all, even a rabbit,” he said, standing outside his home with its spectacular view of the loch. Boars, however, are different, he added.

Since he first noticed the problem, he has had to hire hunters to shoot around 50 boars on his 8.5 acres of land, including one whose carcass weighed about 309 pounds. “I took a look at it,” he said. “My god, I’d never seen teeth like it.”

Nearby, close to the village of Grotaig, Catherine Mclennan, 52, recalled a close call one night when she shone a flashlight at what turned out to be a boar. “I looked at it. It looked at me,” said Ms. Mclennan, a fifth-generation farmer. “It was a scary moment because I thought, ‘What the hell do I do with this?’”

The animal disappeared before she had to decide. But two lambs she left out overnight were not so lucky.

“I went down the next morning to look for them, and the carcass was literally bare,” she said, referring to one of the lambs and speaking close to the paddock where she keeps three horses. “The fleece was at the back end literally in a big lump, and you are like, ‘What the heck, what’s doing this?’”

In fact, boars spend much of their time foraging for roots, using their snouts to turn over land. But they also eat smaller creatures, including lambs, small deer and ground-nesting birds like pheasant and grouse, and their eggs. 

Once native to Scotland, boars were hunted to extinction, probably around the 13th century. Several attempts to reintroduce them for hunting foundered. Then, sometime in the 20th century, a few that had been imported from continental Europe escaped or were released from captivity, probably after having been brought to country estates as a novelty, local residents suspect.

These days, Scotland’s population of boars — or feral pigs — may have “reached the low thousands,” according to NatureScot, the agency that advises the Scottish government on wildlife and other similar issues. But local residents believe that is an underestimate, and some say the agency isn’t doing enough to help.

“The Scottish government needs to take more action as well as compensating farmers for the damage that’s been done to their livestock and damage that’s being done to their ground,” Ms. Mclennan said.

NatureScot declined to make an official available for an interview, but said in a statement that it recognized that boars can “breed prolifically and, if uncontrolled, their rooting behavior can cause damage to the environment and to property.”

The bottom line, the agency says, is that the responsibility for dealing with the boars lies with landowners. 

When Mr. Jamieson needed to address his boar problem, he turned to Robert Sanderson, 41, an ambulance dispatch controller whose side business, Highland Deer Management, helps landowners cope with the sometimes exploding local deer population. Mr. Sanderson shoots the deer and sells the meat. But boars have become a significant part of his work, he said.

On a recent night, Mr. Sanderson drove along the loch with his business partner, Grant Clark, 32, who works in auto repairs. The men, who both live in Inverness, made their way to a hide-out with a view of an open hillside and waited for a while, but no boar showed up. So they thought they were done for the evening.

But 10 minutes after he left the area, Mr. Sanderson’s phone pinged when a boar triggered a sensor on a camera trap near the hillside.

Mr. Sanderson studied the image — “probably going to be 50 kilos-ish” — before he and Mr. Clark hurried back to a vantage point. They concluded that the boar was a solitary female, without youngsters that would starve without it, and therefore a legitimate target. 

Minutes later, a single shot rang out as a boar was struck just below the ear, killing it instantly. The animal rolled a few feet downhill and lay prone.

Mr. Sanderson cut into the boar, removing its intestines for other animals to forage, and dragged away the heavy carcass to sell for meat.

Not everyone near the loch is unhappy to see boars in the neighborhood.

Alex Davies is the estate manager at Bunloit, a 1,200-acre property purchased in 2020 by Highlands Rewilding, an environmental group. He called the animals “ecosystem engineers” who “rotovate” the ground, allowing in new plants and bolstering biodiversity.

According to a drone survey, the estimated boar population on Bunloit stands at 29, and Mr. Davies said it may even be declining because the estate’s animals roam on other land where they might be hunted.

Mr. Davies acknowledged that boars can cause problems, but said that other places where they have returned — like the Forest of Dean, near England’s border with Wales, where he previously worked — have been fine. 

“Back then, 30 years ago, there was a lot of talk about them being dangerous, the numbers increasing, all type of scare stories, none of which came to pass,” he said.

Thirty miles away, Richard Tuxford, a hunting enthusiast who owns an estate at Invergarry, said, “I love all wildlife, and it’s just about controlling it.”

“Everybody and everything are welcome here, all in balance,” he added, standing outside Tomdoun Lodge, his home on the estate, which stretches over more than 11,000 acres of dramatic scenery and was once visited by J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan.

Boars are skilled at hiding and can be “like the scarlet pimpernel,” but sometimes break cover and reveal their swelling numbers, Mr. Tuxford said.

He recalled driving home one night to find his path blocked by a dozen boars of mixed size, trotting in a line down the road in the direction of his home. Not all of them made it.

“I shot one that night,” he said. “We hung that one up in the larder.”

Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe. More about Stephen Castle

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 25, 2024, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: The Loch Ness Monster’s Frightening Neighbors