Berliners under siege from wild boars on the rampage

Published on Monday 22 September 2008 22:48

BERLINERS are demanding a cull of wild boars that have turned parts of the capital into no-go zones.

Tuskers hunting for food now number in their tens of thousands. They uproot gravestones, stop children being released from school, rampage into blocks of flats and block traffic.

Police have been called out to rescue commuters surrounded at bus stops and people unable to leave their cars to get to their front doors.

Recent mild winters have led to an explosion in the numbers of the wild pigs – and their brazenness increases in the face of official inaction in dealing with them.

Forty hunters have permission to shoot those rampaging in cemeteries or on housing estates, but they make little impact in a city terrorised by a pig population some people put at more than 15,000 and growing.