Two wild creatures, common in Europe, known in Britain, without which we on this island could do. The first is a fish. It is the zander, described in the dictionary as a common European species of pike perch. Delicious to eat, says a colleague, who has regularly dined on it in Strasbourg at the end of a long day in the Parliament. It may be delicious to eat, but the press in England says that the zander is terrorising canals as a voracious predator and wiping out other varieties that coarse anglers go after.
Sometimes they grow to huge dimensions. One was sold to the market weighing 21 pounds. They breed fast, and eat even pike. It is suggested that to get rid of them economically, they might be sold to fish and chips shops. But this is a conservative trade. Paul Bourke of Central Fisheries says that, thanks be to God, none have been found in the rivers or canals or lakes of this State. English coarse anglers, mark you, always seem to return their catch to the water. So the zander will prosper. When it does come on the Billingsgate market it sells wholesale at the same price as bass - £3.50 to £4. Wholesale, mark you. Some daft economics there.
The other creature we could do without is the wild boar. In Country Life a Mr Richard H. L. Lutwyche made a prediction: "Sooner or later, the European wild boar, sus scrofa, will be come indigenous in these is lands once more." Since the early 1980s, we are told, a number of wild boar farms have sprung up "throughout the British Isles". The farmer must hold a Dangerous Wild Animals licence and strict fencing is an absolute necessity. For, unlike domestic swine, wild boars are said to be prodigious jumpers. There is a plan for Scotland, to set up a forest of 600 square miles around Glen Affric, and boar might be among once indigenous species to be introduced. Boar farming, of course, is to satisfy the gourmet market. In France, says our author, there are 14 packs of boarhounds, and boar is among the grand gibier that many shooting folk go after there.