Wild Boars in European Cities?

[CalMeacham]

WTF?

I’ve heard two reports in recent days about wild boars causing havoc in major European cities.

They’re running amok in Rome –

Rome overrun by trash-loving wild boars

And Shakira says she was attacked in Barcelona

Shakira Says A Pair Of Wild Boars Attacked Her And Tried To Steal Her Stuff

Here in Massachusetts it’s big news if they see a muskrat or a beaver in Harvard Square. I can’t imagine having packs of wild boars underfoot.

Here’s a long report on the problem. Evidently they’re running through several European cities

Boar wars: how wild hogs are trashing European cities

British hunters drove the wild boar to the brink of extinction centuries ago. At the time of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, there were virtually none in the UK. In recent decades, though, UK boar numbers have swelled. Their reintroduction, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), can be explained by “escapes and deliberate releases from wild boar farms”. Defra estimates wild boar numbers in the past 10 years jumped from a few hundred to more than 4,000 in Wales, Scotland and England, including the group that turned parts of the Stourhead National Trust estate in Wiltshire into a no-go zone last year, and another that ran amok in Kent, shutting down the A21. Bodenchuk, who frequently speaks at international conferences on wild boar management practices, says he sees the tell-tale signs in the UK – rapid urbanisation squeezing an already dwindling habitat and no central plan to control the numbers – for what he calls “a pig bomb in about 60 years.”

And it’s not just the dirt, damage, and threat of injury. the beasts carry swine flu and other diseases

African swine fever has been raging in parts of Europe for the past five years, putting pressure on health officials and scientists to contain it. For Barcelona, the closest active ASF problem area is in Belgium, 620 miles away. But the naturalist Jordi Baucells Colomer told me that, even at that distance, nobody assumes they are safe.

[Si_Amigo]

@CalMeacham

Defra estimates wild boar numbers in the past 10 years jumped from a few hundred to more than 4,000 in Wales, Scotland and England, including the group that turned parts of the Stourhead National Trust estate in Wiltshire into a no-go zone last year, and another that ran amok in Kent,

Was he a hairy, hairy gent? I’d like to meet his tailor.

Wild animals are everywhere, boars are in Paris as well.

Pigs Are Taking Over the Streets of Paris

I live in town and had 12 wild turkeys in my back yard yesterday. We don’t seem to bother the animals as long a we provide them a food source.

[DPRK]

I knew someone who claimed to take them out with a bow and arrow. That was in California, though (where, at least in my imagination, at least the local pumas will prey on some of them? In Europe we are talking wolves.)

[Isamu]

Here in Japan too. I’m in the suburbs of Kobe, but a couple of years ago a wild boar bit off a woman’s finger at the local train station. They come on down from the mountains for food trash.

[DPRK]

Not sure it is a good idea to pet them, unless you fell into a cauldron of magic potion when you were a baby.

[Isamu]

Like *

[iiandyiiii]

I, for one, welcome our new porcine overlords.

I’m very sorry about all the ham.

[Elmer_J.Fudd]

@CalMeacham

British hunters drove the wild boar to the brink of extinction centuries ago. At the time of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, there were virtually none in the UK.

What a wonderfully weird way to set a time stamp.

[Dr.Winston_OBoogie]

And, let’s face it, those swine in Animal Farm were quite domesticated, in fact, they showed all the signs of modern civilization.

[Ike_Witt]

@CalMeacham

can be explained by “escapes and deliberate releases from wild boar farms”

Wild boar farm? Is it just me or is that statement an oxymoron?

[Elmer_J.Fudd]

No, the boar aren’t wild; the farms are.

[psychonaut]

Presuming you set up a farm where you raised wild boar, what would you call it? If you drop the “wild” and call it a “boar farm”, then people are likely to think you’re raising a different (sub)species of animal (Sus domesticus instead of Sus scrofus).

[bump]

They’re here in the US too… a lady in the greater Houston area was actually killed by some a few years ago, and they routinely tear up yards and stuff in more rural suburbs. But they’re not roaming around downtown Houston or Dallas or anything like that.

In the US they’re feral hogs (i.e. domestic hogs that have got loose and are living/reproducing in the wild, not “wild boars” in the sense of some kind of wild, never-domesticated breed of pig. In Europe, that may not be quite as certain; there could well be totally wild pig populations in Europe as well as feral hogs, and all sorts of interbreeding.

[Jasmine]

Sooooooooo … nobody has guns to shoot these things?

[Toxylon]

Firing high-power firearms neccessary for these flesh tanks on city streets is wrought with danger. Misses, but also pass-throughs. Also, wild boar is one of not too many wild animals that will readily attack humans to kill, if injured / threatened. They can go several hundred yards after a lethal hit, and make like a bulldozer all the way.

I’m a bowhunter, and hope to get a chance to arrow these fine-tasting game animals some time soonish. Bowhunting is one method that is used in e.g. European cemeteries to cull hares etc., without undue noise and danger to the public. But a boar with a broadhead through the lungs also sometimes bolts a couple hundred yards before expiring. Woe to anyone on its final path.

[Pardel-Lux]

Of course the boars are wild, feral pigs are for wimps. And we chase them with flamethrowers, otherwise they wouldn’t be crispy!

[Alessan]

@bump

In Europe, that may not be quite as certain; there could well be totally wild pig populations in Europe as well as feral hogs, and all sorts of interbreeding.

The ones that have been ransacking my home town of Haifa, Israel are certainly wild hogs - there’s been no pig domestication in this country since the Crusaders pulled stakes.

[Tamerlane]

@bump

In the US they’re feral hogs (i.e. domestic hogs that have got loose and are living/reproducing in the wild, not “wild boars” in the sense of some kind of wild, never-domesticated breed of pig. In Europe, that may not be quite as certain; there could well be totally wild pig populations in Europe as well as feral hogs, and all sorts of interbreeding.

Mostly, but this varies a little bit. In 1925 European wild boar were imported into Monterey county in CA by a local landowner as game animals. These of course began promptly mixing with local feral swine (who are of course the same species anyway). So in CA at least it is a bit of a mix of wild and feral genotypes and there were other similar incidents in the US. I once saw a boar in the Hastings Preserve in Monterey county and that sucker had an impressively wild-looking phenotype.

[Smapti]

@Jasmine

nobody has guns to shoot these things?

This is just the break Willie McNabb has been waiting for!

Willie McNabb 🐗

@Si_Amigo

Was he a hairy, hairy gent? I’d like to meet his tailor.

Stay away, James. He’ll rip your lungs out.

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@Elmer_J.Fudd

@CalMeacham

British hunters drove the wild boar to the brink of extinction centuries ago. At the time of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, there were virtually none in the UK.

What a wonderfully weird way to set a time stamp.

The same author penned the “ran amok in Kent” line. Cheeky scribe, that one.