Wild boars are rampant in many places, and dealing with conflicts between humans and animals requires scientific approach

Recently, wild boars have appeared in many places across the country. Not only do they come down the mountains in groups to look for food, but they have also destroyed things and injured people in some fields and even downtown areas. As the "pig disaster" is rampant, many places have had to issue wild boar "wanted orders."

According to CCTV Finance, in recent years, with the implementation of a series of projects such as natural forest protection, returning farmland to forest, nature reserves, and wildlife protection, the ecological environment quality of wildlife habitats has continued to improve, and the population of wild animals such as wild boars has continued to grow. On the other hand, due to the strong reproductive capacity, high survival rate, and wide adaptability of wild boars, but the relatively small population of wild animals such as tigers, leopards, and bears, the population of wild boars in some areas has increased dramatically. In Tongjiang County, Sichuan Province alone, according to preliminary investigations, there were 20,000 wild boars in the county in 2020.

Since the beginning of this year, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration has carried out comprehensive pilot prevention and control work on wild boar damage in 14 provinces including Jiangxi, requiring localities to investigate and assess wild boar damage and organize hunting and control activities. The Shaanxi Provincial Forestry Bureau issued a notice in July to shorten the wild boar hunting ban from the original 8 months to 2 months; Tongjiang County, Sichuan Province plans to kill 750 wild boars by the end of 2021; Jinzhai County, Anhui Province has formed a 20-person hunting team composed of local villagers, and plans to complete the target of 200 wild boar hunting by January 31 next year.

Wild boars destroy fields, injure people and hit cars with MAX combat power

There is an old saying in the countryside: one pig, two bears, and three tigers. In the eyes of many older villagers, when encountering extremely aggressive wild animals, wild boars are undoubtedly the most terrifying, and they are even more dangerous than the king of beasts, the tiger. After all, tigers and bears are not common, and rarely attack humans.

Wild boars are different.

As a medium-sized mammal, their average weight is about 150 kilograms. In some areas without natural enemies, wild boars usually weigh more than 200 kilograms. In some areas, there are even wild boar kings weighing 400 kilograms.

In 2019, a wild boar weighing nearly 400 kilograms broke into a restaurant in Lishui, Nanjing, and was shot dead by the police after a nine-hour standoff. Source: Global Times

Secondly, wild boars can run very fast, up to 40-70 kilometers per hour, and can jump vertically up to one meter. Therefore, they are very strong and even more threatening than bears and tigers.

When threatened, wild boars use their tusks to defend themselves, and tuskless sows bite. While not fatal, such attacks can result in serious injuries.

According to data from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, 36 cases of wild boar injuries were recorded in Hong Kong in the past 10 years, 80% of which occurred between 2018 and 2021, an average of 10 cases per year in the past three years. In the early morning of November 10, an auxiliary police officer was attacked by a wild boar while patrolling in North Point, Hong Kong, resulting in a bone-exposing injury to his right calf.

Image source: Kankan News

Similar incidents also happen from time to time in mainland China. Last month, a villager in Yichun, Heilongjiang was attacked by a wild boar weighing 400 kilograms while ploughing the land. A hole was pierced through his back by the wild boar's tusks.

In May this year, a village party secretary in Litang was attacked by a wild boar while patrolling the mountains, resulting in death from excessive blood loss.

In addition to attacking humans, wild boars are also extremely destructive to materials and property.

On the night of November 12, a running wild boar crashed into a car on the Nanjing Expressway, scaring the owner. A few days later, also in Nanjing, a citizen called the police to report that his car was broken by a group of wild boars. The traffic police checked the surveillance and found that a wild boar mother was out looking for food with five or six piglets, which led to the accident.

This is the case even in the bustling city. In the countryside, wild boars are out, leaving no grass behind. According to the Beijing News, wild boars have set their sights on bamboo shoots in Xitou Township, Wuyuan City, Jiangxi Province, and they eat them before they even pop out. And more news of "working hard to grow vegetables for a year, but all eaten overnight" is common in many rural areas.

Wild boars destroyed more than 30 acres of wheat and ate more than 70 acres of corn out of more than 100 acres. A couple in Xichuan County, Nanyang City, Henan Province hunted at least 8 wild boars within 3 months. The court sentenced them to 1 year and 6 months in prison, suspended for 2 years, and 1 year in prison, suspended for 2 years for the crime of illegal hunting.

Since wild boars are protected animals, hunting them privately may be a crime. People can only scare them with primitive methods such as putting up scarecrows and beating gongs and drums, but the effect is minimal.

At the beginning of the 21st century, wild boars were included in the "List of Terrestrial Wildlife with Important Economic and Scientific Research Value under State Protection", becoming so-called "three-protected" animals. Unauthorized hunting is illegal. At the same time, the state also confiscated guns and banned civilian hunting. The tragic situation of being hunted by everyone has finally gone, and the life of wild boars has gradually improved.

However, in recent years, the ecological environment has been improving, and the wild boars have a strong reproductive capacity. A female wild boar gives birth to two litters a year, with an average of 4-12 piglets in each litter. The number of wild boars has increased rapidly. In 2006, the number of wild boars in Zhejiang Province reached 100,000. Last year, Shaanxi Province also released survey information, and the number of wild boars in the province also exceeded 100,000. In Sichuan, the number of wild boars in Tongjiang County alone exceeded 20,000.

As the saying goes, everything has its limits. Although it is no longer possible for us to mobilize the military and civilians to hunt wild boars on a large scale, it is imperative to control the number of wild boars. According to the "Wildlife Protection Law of the People's Republic of China", with government approval, people can hunt wild boars under certain conditions after obtaining a hunting license and a gun license.

The wild boar broke into the hospital and was taken away by the police. Source/Internet

In the past three years, the number of newly established hunting companies in the country has increased by nearly 400, with a total of more than 1,000. At the same time, provinces that are plagued by wild boars, such as Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Jiangxi, and Anhui, have launched comprehensive pilot projects to prevent and control wild boar damage, and have established 117 hunting teams. For example, the Forestry Department of Anhui Province is negotiating with the Provincial Public Security Department. After approval by the provincial government, it is allowed to equip townships or administrative villages with a certain number of hunting rifles, implement a management method of real-name purchase, centralized storage, and use when needed, demarcate areas for hunting wild boars with guns, and the city and county forestry departments approve and announce the annual quota for hunting wild boars; at the same time, a professional hunting team is established to hunt wild boars.

For many years, people's attitude towards wild boars can be described as "I won't offend you if you don't offend me". Qiao Xinsheng, a professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, believes that the damage caused by protecting wild animals is also the cost of protecting animals. At present, relevant provinces have introduced corresponding compensation policies for victims while hunting wild boars, which has eased the contradictions and conflicts between people and wild boars to a certain extent. I believe that we can respond calmly in the next wildlife protection actions to achieve harmonious coexistence between man and nature.

After the “hunting order” is issued, can we eat wild boars if we catch them?

Wild boars are rampant. One-on-one fight is no match for them, and gathering in groups to beat them up is illegal. Is there really nothing we can do about them?

On November 16, the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department and the police carried out a wild boar capture operation in Sham Wan Road, Aberdeen. The AFCD used bread as bait, and about a dozen wild boars of all sizes rushed down the mountain to grab food. The AFCD successfully surrounded and captured them and fired tranquilizer guns. Seven wild boars fell to the ground and were injected with drugs and humanely killed on the spot.

The necessity and rationality of this move has sparked heated discussions among all parties in Hong Kong. Some animal protection groups said that "humane destruction" is only a temporary solution and not a permanent one. Wild boars should be sterilized before being released back into the wild, and long-term plans should be made for the "coexistence of wild animals and humans". In an interview with TVB on the 21st, the Director of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, Leung Siu-fai, said that since 2017, the strategy of "capture, sterilization, contraception, and release" has been adopted to deal with wild boars. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department has relocated about 800 wild boars and sterilized about 450 wild boars in four years. However, due to the rapid reproduction of wild boars and the fact that citizens often feed them in black spots, this strategy has not been very effective.

In Tongjiang County, Sichuan, where the number of wild boars is as high as 20,000, the government department hired a professional hunting team with a gun license. On November 6, staff from the Forestry Bureau and the Agriculture and Rural Bureau of Tongjiang County went into the mountains with the hunting team to carry out the first wild boar prevention and control hunting operation. In two and a half days, a total of 8 wild boars were hunted, and 2 hunting dogs were bitten to death by wild boars during the process.

Some netizens said that it took a lot of effort to catch just a few of them, so it would be better to make use of the foodie nature of the Chinese people. It would surely not take long to eat all the wild boars.

But this idea is the least feasible. Last year, my country issued a law to completely ban the consumption of wild animals. I believe everyone still remembers the lessons of the new coronavirus epidemic. Wild animals are easy to carry pathogens, and people may be infected with bacteria and viruses after eating them, which is extremely harmful.

Since they cannot be eaten, they must be disposed of according to standard procedures. The staff of the Tongjiang County Animal Health Supervision Institute generally use quicklime to disinfect the captured wild boars and bury them in deep pits on the spot for harmless disposal.

"Only when the amount killed is relatively large, and after strict inspection and quarantine and processing by professional departments, can it be processed into animal feed and effectively utilized, such as being fed to lions and tigers in zoos," said Li Bin, director of the Tongjiang County Wildlife Conservation Center.

Facing the "pig plague" across the country, Zhang Minghai, a member of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration's comprehensive pilot expert group for wild boar damage prevention and control and a professor at the School of Wildlife and Nature Reserves of Northeast Forestry University, believes that hunting is the most important and effective way at present. But again, hunting wild boars can only be carried out by the government.

Further reading:

If there are too many wild boars, should we kill them?

Recently, reports about wild boars appearing in China have been trending on the Internet, bringing this previously unnoticed animal into the lives of ordinary people. Why are there more wild boars? Have they increased in number recently? Do wild boars still need to be protected in the future? Perhaps many people will have such questions.

In fact, news about the increase in the number of wild boars has been reported in China more than ten years ago, and relevant departments have taken various countermeasures including hunting.

Moreover, wild boars are not endangered species, nor are they included in the list of key protected wild animals in the country. In this context, is the increase in wild boars a blessing or a curse? How can we scientifically and rationally view the ecological and social problems caused by them?

Solving human-animal conflicts requires scientific responses

Although the implementation of the Wildlife Protection Law and the confiscation of hunting rifles have promoted wild boar protection, the growth of wild boar populations is still restricted by other factors, such as population base, number of natural enemies, habitat quality, and environmental carrying capacity.

Since the beginning of the new century, the country has attached increasing importance to ecological environmental protection, and wildlife protection has been raised to an unprecedented level.

In addition to the implementation of major ecological projects such as the natural forest protection project, the number and area of ​​nature reserves in my country have repeatedly set new highs, and relevant law enforcement agencies have continued to increase their efforts to crack down on illegal and criminal activities involving wild animals. These measures have provided convenient conditions for the growth of wild boar populations.

It can be said that the restorative growth of the wild boar population is a microcosm of the development of ecological environmental protection in my country, and the achievements made in wild boar protection also have reference and reference significance for wildlife protection.

From an ecological perspective, although wild boars are not an endangered species, they have a very close relationship with the local ecosystem: they can help a variety of plants pollinate and spread seeds; in the process of searching for fruits and rhizomes, wild boars can increase soil permeability, prevent over-dense growth of understory plants, and accelerate the decomposition of organic matter; wild boar excrement helps increase soil fertility, etc.

In addition, wild boars are on the menu of many predators, and fluctuations in their populations directly affect the survival of top predators.

The survival status of carnivores such as tigers, leopards, wolves, and jackals in my country is generally not optimistic, which is also an important reason for the rapid growth of wild boar populations in some areas.

How to effectively alleviate the conflict between humans and wild animals, represented by wild boars, is undoubtedly a new challenge facing my country's ecological protection field. Relevant departments are urgently needed to study and formulate solutions with a scientific attitude.

Source: Nandu Weekly, China Science Daily, National Humanities and History, etc.