A POSSE of wild piglets and two adult boar brought traffic to a standstill when they crossed a Forest road.

Video captured by Mike Powell shows two grown boar herding at least 13 piglets - known as humbugs because of their distinctive colouring – across a road near Viney Hill.

Mike, from Lydney, was driving through Viney Hill with his daughter when they were amazed to come across the boars.

"Seeing boar isn’t unusual, in fact I see them most days when walking my dogs, but seeing this number of juvenile boar together was something I’d not seen before," he said.

According to Forestry England, the Forest of Dean is an "ideal habitat for feral wild boar".

In the video, one adult boar can be seen leading the group of piglets, with the other rounding them up in the middle until they all crossed the road safely, like a boar version of a school crossing patrol.

Mike, who spends most of his free time in the Severn estuary trying to keep knowledge of its heritage fisheries alive, shared the video across his X page @severnpiscator.

"It certainly is not a great spot for them but thankfully, it was a very slow section of road."

Adult wild boar can stand up to 80cm at the shoulder and they normally weigh between 60–100kg.

Piglets are a lighter ginger-brown, with stripes on their coat for camouflage, hence the nickname humbug

It is estimated that around 650 boar now live in the Wyedean area, with regular culls carried out by Forestry England to control numbers.

Wild boar were were hunted to extinction at least 300-years ago, but the Forest population established itself in woodlands near Ross-on-Wye after escaping from a wild boar farm during the 1990s.

In 2004, a group of around 60 farm reared animals were also dumped in an illegal release close to the village of Staunton between Monmouth and Coleford.

By 2009 the two populations had merged and a breeding population was thriving.

For more information visit: https://www.forestryengland.uk/article/wild-boar-the-forest-dean