Police officers are being despatched to scenic mountain areas to drive away wild boars to try to prevent attacks on people.

Several sightings of the animals have been reported recently around West Lake in Hangzhou, capital city of east China's Zhejiang Province.

The Zhejiang Provincial Public Safety Bureau and Forestry Bureau has now sent out special teams to keep the animals away from the area.

It also hopes the move will help prevent wild boars, an animal under State protection, damaging the environment.

Officials and experts are studying problems associated with wild boars, according to Ma Jianhui, an official from the West Lake Scenic Spots Administration Committee.

As reports of sightings and attacks of wild boar grow, they have aroused panic among the local residents in Hangzhou recently.

On December 21, an injured wild boar was shot dead by local police who had been hunting it for more than a week because of fears it might attack a person due to its condition.

Another boar bit a man last month before fleeing back into the woods in Zhongtianzhu Hills near West Lake.

"It looked ferocious, black all over, about one metre long and almost 100 kilograms in weight," the injured man, Fu Guozhong, was quoted as saying.

"It knocked me over twice and I had no idea of what was going on."

Just two days before Fu was attacked, two adult boars and four younger ones were spotted running through a valley close to the densely-populated downtown area.

Experts said the well-protected ecological environment near West Lake areas has contributed to the increased number of wild boars in recent years.

Usually boars in herds seldom attack human beings. However, a lonely boar is irritable and aggressive, they said.

(China Daily January 4, 2006)