The town of Nice on the western Mediterranean shore of France stands for luxury, fashion, great hotels and shops and restaurants and for the Carnival of Flowers. Not to speak of the luxury yachts lying offshore. According to one source, Nice today is under siege - hard to believe - from wild boars. The wildlife magazine Le Chasseur Francais headlines an article "Carnival of The Wild Boars" and goes on: "It's like a film .. . as night falls the black beasts invade the town's gardens and rip up whatever grows. Children lure them on with bread, not realising the danger, for a sow with young will not hesitate to charge." Local game wardens are kept busy. One of them, Barthelemy Cauvin, has caught as many as seven boars in one private garden and four in the grounds of the psychiatric hospital. Garden fencing or railing, unless deeply buried, is little protection. The boar just runs its snout underneath and with a toss of the head it is open. And goodbye to the plants, grass and flowers inside. One evening he was called when a company of boars broke into a garden despite electric fencing and a guard. He shot the biggest but the pack went off. He followed and killed four, including the one he had wounded.
It's not only in Nice. Wardens were called to VilleneuveLoubet nearby where boars chased an old lady. And such fashionable places as Menton, Roquebrune-CapMartin and even Saint-JeanCap-Ferrat need watching. In the past year there were 47 car accidents with boars in Nice and 247 along autoroutes of the south. The town of Nice is built around a series of hills and valleys, with ravines of scrub which converge on the city centre. For decades the hills were covered with terraces where flowers flourished. They are no longer cultivated and have returned to the wild with, says the article, green oak, the acorns of which are much appreciated by the boars. And left-over plants or bulbs make a feast for them. It's all like a boulevard on which the animals parade every night. One local is quoted as saying: "We don't dare go out at night when they come in packs, unless we are armed, for some of them weigh at least 80 kilos." That's a lot of boar.
The Alpes Maritimes, north of Nice, have been the route by which wolves from Italy have been spreading across France. Already we've seen the reaction of farmers to that invasion. And then there is the disputed policy of bringing bears from Slovenia to the Pyrenees. France is not short of wildlife. Y