Municipal incinerators have been used to dispose of the boars, but there is a shortage of personnel needed to perform the gruelling and messy task of chopping up their bodies

Communities in northern Japan are being overwhelmed by radioactive wild boars which are rampaging across the countryside after being contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The animals’ numbers are increasing as the boar breed unhindered in the exclusion zone around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, and they are causing damage to farms well beyond the area poisoned by radiation. Hunters are shooting the boars as fast as they can, but local cities are running out of burial space and incinerator capacity to dispose of their corpses.

In the city of Nihonmatsu, 56km (35 miles) from the nuclear plant, three mass graves with a capacity for 600 boars each are almost full, and the local government has run out of spare land.

Municipal incinerators have been