They arrived in the pandemic to stay
Berlin, Houston, Hong Kong, Milan or Barcelona are just a few names from the long list of cities that have seen how wild boars roam (almost) freely through its streets. These animals, which normally come close enough to urban centers, have practically become the new neighbors of many not exactly small metropolises.
They got there in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic locked the entire planet in their homes. It was at that time when these mammals of the suidae family dared to approach population centers that until now had been hostile environments for them. With the greening that cities suffered during the months of human inactivity, wild boars and other wild animals ventured out to explore.
Yet now, more than two years later, they have become a real headache for neighbors and consistories. And it is that, as they explain in a statement from the 13th International Symposium on wild boar and other suid held in Barcelona last September, this animal is “one of the most successful mammal species in Europe, and in the world”.
[Un jabalí busca comida desesperado en una zona poblada de Barcelona]
Populations, they warn, “are expanding in number and distribution, colonizing all kinds of habitats and regions, from high mountain areas to plains and urban areas”. Therefore, the challenge is to control its growth and reduce the possible social, economic and biodiversity impacts that it may cause.
“A management based on scientific and applied knowledge is necessary, now more than ever, to reduce human-boar conflicts“, they explain in the statement.
Wild boars in Barcelona
The president of the last edition of the symposium, Carme Rosell, researcher, Minuartia consultant and collaborator of the University of Barcelona, explained during the symposium that “in recent years, the loss of fear of humans has warned of the conflicts generated by the species due to the occupation of cities and crop areas where they have access to unlimited sources of food, causing great economic losses to the Catalan peasantry”.
It is estimated that only in Catalonia live more than 200,000 individuals of wild boar, population whose growth has been precipitated, above all, by the disappearance of the wolf. And it is that the lack of natural predators of these animals is presented as one of the main reasons for their disappearance.
However, as Joaquín Vicente Baños, coordinator scientist for Enerwild, a European consortium of wildlife experts, explains to the British newspaper The Guardian, The problem is not new. Already in 2017, long before the arrival of the coronavirus, the increase in the wild boar population could be seen. Of course, says Baños, “Now is when we are seeing the consequences.”
And it is that, perhaps, we are seeing how the human being is reaching the limits of urbanism. Therefore, the municipalities are looking for new ways to deal with this wild species.
That is the case of the Condal City council: last spring the a shock plan to stop the destruction that the wild boars they were provoking throughout the metropolitan area of Barcelona. 2021 was also the year in which the incursions of these mammals into the city were most evident. There were 1,202 incidents registereda historical record that even resulted in attacks on neighbors.
There’s a solution?
With its shock plan, the Catalan capital intended to reinforce the scheduled captures in the neighborhoods most vulnerable to these animals and install a new cage-trap, with which there would already be three in the city. Other actions that have been carried out by the council are the clearing of land that shelters wild boars and the reinforcement of containers so that they do not have as much access to food.
However, it seems that, for the moment, hunting has become the key to control this ‘plague’. In Catalonia alone, approximately 67,000 wild boars are hunted each year. Something that helps to control the population, but that has been shown to be insufficient.
However, as Rosell remarked at the symposium, although hunting partly replaces the natural predator, what must be done is”control their access to foodboth in urban and rural environments”. Thus, he explained, their fertility could be reduced. Along with this, he concluded, preventing the crossing of wild boars with the Vietnamese stands as one of the best solutions to control the populations of these wild mammals who have lost their fear of human beings.
