Hunter feedback of individually marked wild boar Sus scrofa L.: dispersal and efficiency of hunting in northeastern Germany

Abstract

Increasing wild boar (Sus scrofa L.) population densities all over Europe cause severe economic problems. For understanding mechanisms of epidemics, the knowledge of dispersal is required. Thus, we investigated dispersal rates and distances with regard to sex and age of wild boar in southwestern Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. From 152 marked wild boar, 105 have been registered as dead, of which, 51% were males and 49% females. Fortyfive percent were shot as piglets, 41% as yearlings, and 14% as adults. The distance between capture site and site of death ranged between 184 m and 41.5 km. Piglets were shot closer to their capture site (mean distance 1 km) than older animals (mean 4 km), although this difference was only significant for males. In general, males tended to disperse further before being shot (3.8 km) than females (1.6 km). Only 3.8% of all animals were shot at distances larger than 10 km. As most animals (84.6%) were shot inside their natal home range, only a small proportion (15.4%) did actually disperse (shot outside mothers home range), which is 32% of all animals surviving to the age of yearlings. Of those dispersed animals, 25% were females. The low dispersal rate is biased by female philopatry and allows actual dispersal only at very high population densities or in sparsely populated regions. In consideration for the low natural mortality proved by radiotagged animals, the harvest rate is lower than the net reproduction. We did not detect any sex-biased hunting. The dominating hunting method was single hunt at bait, although drive hunts are highly effective. However, hunting rates on piglets and females were too low for regulating the population.

The effect of selected environmental Fusarium mycotoxins on the ovaries in the female wild boar (Sus scrofa)

“…Wild boar population continue to increase in Poland and in other countries. The above decreases in physical tolerance and competitiveness in forest ecosystems (van Ginkel et al 2013, Liu et al 2013) prompt boars to search for food in fields, meadows or human settlements (Keuling et al 2008(Keuling et al , 2010. Ecotones are narrow transitional zones between different ecosystems, they are characterized by labile boundaries and are commonly used as indicators of climate change (Wasson et al 2013).…”

Assessing whether mortality is additive using marked animals: a Bayesian state–space modeling approach

“…Increased emigration of wild boars out of the study area with increasing hunting bags could also be discarded as hunted animals were recovered at a much larger scale than the trapping zone (8800 ha vs. ;2000 ha; see Toı¨go et al 2008 for further details). Moreover, wild boars are known to be sedentary animals, especially females (Truve´and Lemel 2003, Keuling et al 2009). Therefore, crippling loss was most likely the factor causing increased mortality with increasing hunting bags.…”

Evaluation of Electric Fencing to Inhibit Feral Pig Movements

“…Most of these studies considering internal state referred to developmental stage or sex diff erence eff ect on movement, e.g. study by Keuling et al (2010) for link D or Janeau et al (1995) for link C. Th e link F between navigation and orientation mechanisms was considered in only 2% of studies.…”