Friday, November 11, 2022

National Geographic reports that Italy has an infestation of wild boar, and they are as commonly hit by traffic as raccoons in Michigan



after World War II, as Italy’s economy boomed and its population urbanized, forests slowly healed and wildlife returned. 

Wild boars feed on many foods, mostly human crops, and their population rebounded—particularly in the absence of the gray wolf, their main predator.

Starting in the late 1950s, Italian hunting groups pushed cities and regional governments to stock boars in empty forests for hunting sport.

According to a recent study, wild boars are now a familiar presence in 105 Italian cities, compared with only two a decade ago.

“They have accessed a gigantic pantry: our farm fields and organic urban waste. Nothing has been effective at curbing their population growth—they have no predators; their natural habitat, the forest, is expanding; and winters are less cold,” she says.

“But there is another essential factor: They have lost their fear of human beings.”

Boar hunting tradition in Italy and France has been demonstrably ineffective at reducing the population, instead, it creates a increased breeding situation, with a shorter time between litters. Yes, that's counterproductive. 

Hunters mostly go after the larger boars (trophy hunting), disintegrating the family nucleus and scattering smaller females that will begin their reproductive cycle earlier.

Instead, the government should hire hunters to selectively target reproductive females, which would drastically reduce the population, but traditional hunters oppose this idea, both because of its solitary nature and because it would limit boars available for the much-loved caccia in braccata, a communal form of hunting in which a few hunters with dogs herd boars toward other hunters at particular stations, where the animals are then killed. It’s an opportunity to meet friends, be in nature, and have a drink afterward.

Boar culling does not solve the problem, and in many cases this practice increases reproduction, a phenomenon also found among wolves

the 13th International Symposium of Wild Boars in Barcelona, for the first time, attained a consensus that wild boars need to be contained across the continent.


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