Hampshire's downland supports a calcareous grassland habitat, important for wild flowers and insects. A large area of the downs is now protected from further agricultural damage by the East Hampshire Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The River Test has a growing number of otters as, increasingly, does the Itchen, although other areas of the county have quite low numbers. There are wild boar kept for meat in the New Forest, which is known for its ponies and herds of fallow deer, red deer, roe deer, and sika deer as well as a small number of muntjac deer. The deer had been hunted for some 900 years until 1997. An unwelcome relative newcomer is the mink population, descended from animals that escaped or were deliberately released from fur farms since the 1950s, which cause havoc amongst native wildlife.