Feral pigs or wild boar? Emerging interpretations of belonging and coexistence in the Scottish Highlands

Le résumé fourni par la source

A growing nature recovery agenda in Scotland is creating new ecologies through species reintroductions, placing increased pressures on rural communities to coexist with animals for which there are no cultural, institutional or living memories. One such species is wild boar, officially called feral pigs, and hereafter WBFPs to acknowledge debates over their identity. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Scottish Highlands, this paper examines emerging interpretations of WBFP coexistence; and factors shaping them across local and national discourses. Locally, three discourses – ferality, wildness, and controlled decontrolling – emerged that each propose distinct pathways to coexistence. These discourses were shaped by the unsanctioned nature of WBFPs' release, the extinction of experience, tensions over rewilding, the Scottish Government's non-interventionist approach (including the feral categorisation of WBFPs), limited scientific knowledge, storytelling, and media sensationalism. We examine two cross-cutting themes – belonging and storytelling – to understand how these factors have shaped and co-produced discourses. WBFPs were predominantly positioned as out of place, dangerous, and unruly. This perception of unbelonging was predominantly shaped by the extinction of experience, where the absence of cultural practices, management traditions, and institutional frameworks has left WBFPs without established roles or relations in the landscape. Storytelling emerged not merely as anecdotal noise, but as a powerful driver of coexistence interpretations. Limited experiential and scientific knowledge created more fertile ground for stories to circulate – amplifying negative experiences, fuelling fear, and polarising discourses. These disputes are likely to be reproduced wherever WBFP populations expand under the Scottish Government's current approach, which has helped construct WBFPs as a feral pest rather than a native species with which coexistence must be negotiated.

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