Sidelines is starting to get extremely suspicious about the plague of wild boar which are apparently digging up gardens and running into cars all over the Veluwe heath lands.

The pro-hunt lobby says killing 5,000 boar – using beaters to drive them out into the open – is the only way to restore order. They are even throwing the heightened risk of a swine fever epidemic into the debate, saying the boar will be responsible if the disease breaks out again.
MPs are at loggerheads with the minister over her wish to lift the ban on hunting. The minister is currently deciding what to do. Perhaps she could start by actually looking at the evidence.
We’ve had shock horror stories about how the boar population has exploded to 6,000 while the area can only cope with 800 but how these figures were arrived at is anyone’s guess.
We have seen photographs of playground grass at campsites that has allegedly been mauled by boars, but the same damage could just as well have been caused by the digging activities of five-year-old Freddy who didn’t like the sandpit.
And then there are the 350 or so car accidents involving boar. The roads should be littered with boar carcasses, the papers full of stories of traumatised drivers with photographs of their bashed-in bumpers. So where are these dead boar? Perhaps they have all been taken away and eaten.