It’s a freezing cold January afternoon in the Forest of Dean, and as the sun dips below the treeline it’s all bosky gloom. Dressed in black to avoid detection (and unwashed so my shower gel doesn’t alert their highly developed sense of smell), I am on the trail of some unpredictable runaways. “These are the descendants of 15 escapees,” my guide Chantal Lyons explains. “They are now the biggest population in Britain for hundreds of years.”
We are in pursuit of wild boars. In 1999, 15 of them escaped from a local farm or were freed into the forest, no one is sure. They have established themselves here among the forest’s 27,000 acres and 200 million trees. Forget official rewilding, these pigs took the law
