Long life: Either we kill wild boars or we reintroduce wolves

As it happens, a male wild boar can weigh roughly what Luciano Pavarotti weighed when he was alive — about 330lbs, or more than 23 stone. But unlike the gentle Pavarotti, wild boars throw their weight about in the most destructive fashion. I know a bit about this because, more than 40 years ago, my wife bought a farmhouse in Tuscany where thousands of wild boars live. Every summer they would come by night to forage in its freshly watered garden, turning it into what next morning looked like a ploughed field or building site. (Only herds of elephants in the African bush do as much damage.)

The boars also made a terrible mess of the little vineyard beside the house, for they eat anything and are surprisingly fond of grapes. We installed flashing lights to frighten them off. When this didn’t work, we replaced the lights with a device that made a loud bang every few minutes; but while this woke us up regularly throughout the night, it made no impression on them whatsoever. In the end, the problem was only solved at great expense by putting an electric fence around the entire property.

Once there were wild boars in Britain, too — in the Middle Ages boar hunting was considered the noblest and bravest of outdoor sports — but they were hunted to extinction 400 years ago, allowing this country a few centuries of peace and quiet. But then in the late 1980s one or two wild boars were spotted on Paul McCartney’s estate near Peasmarsh in East Sussex. They were assumed to have escaped from the late John Aspinall’s nearby wildlife park or from one of Britain’s handful of wild boar farms.