Wild boars are on the rampage in the eastern French region of Lorraine and are giving a real headache to the hunters who have to pay for the damage they cause, mainly to farmers' crops.

It is difficult to accurately estimate wild boar numbers, but "one thing is for sure": there are too many of them and they are causing too much damage, says Romeo Rieder of the Meurthe and Moselle hunting federation.

This summer's blistering heat wave saw an explosion in the number of wild boar, the fast breeding rate of which can easily triple or quadruple their population in a year, say big game experts in hunting federations.

In Lorraine, wild boar numbers have been on the rise since a 1999 storm which saw a hunting moratorium enforced the following year and then sheltered areas with dense vegetation cover being put aside for the animals.

Hunters killed 19,000 wild boars in 1997-98, says Olivier Schoenstein, the head of the regional hunting federation.

Last year, that figure topped 50,000, including 10,000 in Meurthe and Moselle, 16,000 in Moselle, 17,000 in Meuse and almost 8,000 in Vosges.

"When we hunt 10,000 in Meurthe and Moselle, that's still not half the number" of beasts out there, says Rieder.

Farmers are at their wits' end. During a recent visit by Agriculture Minister Herve Gaymard to the Vosges region, they complained of the increasing damage caused by wild boars, notably to fields of corn, their preferred food.

Wild boars "turn dozens of hectares of fields into meadows," complains Vosges farming trade unionist Daniel Grandclair.

It's the hunters who have to pay for the damage of their game and it's beginning to get costly.

In Lorraine, a region bordering Germany where boar hunting is considered by some as a rite of passage, damages paid to farmers shot up to 4.5 million euros (5.3 million dollars) in 2002 from three million euros in 2000, Schoenstein said.

In Vosges, 1,200 complaints were filed until June 5 this year against 717 for the whole of 2002, when damages of 800,000 euros were paid out, Grandclair said.

The French government has waded into the debate with a plan that envisages stopping the hunters from scattering grain for wild boars, a practice that keeps the animals in particular hunting areas.

"It's practically rearing them!" Grandclair says of the grain scattering, pleading for a "progressive" end to the practice on the grounds that a sudden halt would lead to more damage as wild boars go looking elsewhere for food.

Michel Thomas of the Meuse hunting federation, counters, however, that "to stop scattering grain would be a catastrophe. If they do that, hunters will no longer pay damages."

TERRA.WIRE