Past experiences drive citizen perception of wild boar in urban areas

Conejero, Carles; Castillo‐Contreras, Raquel; González‐Crespo, Carlos; Serrano, Emmanuel; Mentaberre, Gregorio; Lavı́n, Santiago; López‐Olvera, Jorge Ramón

doi:10.1016/j.mambio.2019.04.002

Cited by 29 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…1). Ungulates may be attracted to (peri)urban areas (Table 1) because of improved habitat (Fernández et al 2006, Kilpatrick et al 2011), the lack of predators or increased opportunities for feeding (Cahill et al 2012, Castillo‐Contreras et al 2018, Conejero et al 2019). Other causes are the expansion of urban areas into the countryside (Amendolia et al 2019), with rivers and roads acting as the main movement corridors (Stillfried et al 2017b) and hunting restrictions (Sterwart 2011), since hunting is often forbidden in urban areas (Storm et al 2007).…”

Section: Methods and Contexts Of Overabundancementioning

confidence: 99%

Wild ungulate overabundance in Europe: contexts, causes, monitoring and management recommendations

2020

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High‐density populations of large ungulates are now widespread. However, the perception of overabundance only appears when it produces a problem for humans, such as a loss of plant diversity, damage to agricultural crops and forestry, ungulate‐vehicle collisions, a nuisance to humans, disease transmission to livestock or changes in habitat for other species. The admissible level of density depends on the ecological and socio‐economic context in which the population is located, and defining this level is important, in order to determine management strategies and actions. We describe the main contexts in which ungulate overabundance occurs in Europe, record the causes of overabundance and evaluate which set of indicators of ecological change is the most appropriate for monitoring and diagnosing overabundance in each scenario. Our review of 318 published papers revealed six contexts of wild ungulate overabundance in Europe (protected areas, hunting areas, forestry, arable farming, livestock farming and [peri]urban areas). In addition to population abundance, four sets of indicators of environmental change could be used to monitor overabundance within these contexts (impacts on habitats, impact on animal performance, increments in diseases and parasite loads, and increments in nuisance to humans). Nine species of ungulate were found to be overabundant. Red deer Cervus elaphus was the species most likely to be overabundant in the contexts of protected areas (detailed in 27% of papers on that context) and hunting areas (38%); roe deer Capreolus capreolus in forestry (28%); wild boar Sus scrofa in arable farming (60%), livestock farming (29%) and (peri)urban areas (38%). Our evidence shows that the diagnosis and monitoring of ungulate population overabundance via indicators of ecological change, and the management actions required to control these undesirable situations, are strongly context‐dependent.

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Section: Methods and Contexts Of Overabundancementioning

confidence: 99%

Wild ungulate overabundance in Europe: contexts, causes, monitoring and management recommendations

2020

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“…However, in most countries there are no registered toxicants to control this species and the use of these compounds is often opposed on grounds of animal welfare and environmental impact. In some contexts, such as urban areas and national parks, lethal methods to regulate wild boar numbers can be unpopular, logistically unfeasible or even illegal [31]. In recent years, fertility control has emerged as a non-lethal alternative or a complementary option to culling especially where there is little public support for hunting or lethal control [32][33][34].…”

Section: A1111111111 A1111111111 A1111111111 A1111111111 A1111111111mentioning

confidence: 99%

Too many wild boar? Modelling fertility control and culling to reduce wild boar numbers in isolated populations

et al. 2020

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Wild boar and feral swine number and range are increasing worldwide in parallel with their impact on biodiversity and human activities. The ecological and economic impact of this species include spread of diseases, vehicle collisions, damage to crops, amenities and infrastructures and reduction in plant and animal abundance and richness. As traditional methods such as culling have not contained the growth and spread of wild boar and feral pigs, alternative methods such as fertility control are now advocated. We used empirical data on two isolated wild boar populations to model and compare the effects of different regimes of culling and fertility control on population trends. We built a Bayesian population model and applied it to explore the implications for population control of various management options combining culling and/or contraception. The results showed that, whilst fertility control on its own was not sufficient to achieve the target reduction in wild boar number, adding fertility control to culling was more effective than culling alone. In particular, using contraceptives on 40% of the population to complement the culling of 60% of the animals, halved the time to achieve our target reduction compared with culling only. We conclude that, assuming the effort of adding fertility control to culling was found to be cost-effective in terms of population reduction, these two methods should be used simultaneously if a rapid decrease in wild boar number is required for a closed population.

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“…The expansion of humans results in wild boar's habitat reduction. Due to the lack of natural predators in many places and increasing food supply, the wild boar population numbers are constantly increasing (Massei et al, 2014) and consequently it comes to their invasion into urban areas (Kotulski & König, 2008;Toger et al, 2018;Conejero et al, 2019). This leads to many conflicts between wild boar and humans.…”

Section: Functions Of the Behavioural Elementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioural patterns of free roaming wild boar in a spatiotemporal context

Erdtmann

Keuling

2020

PeerJ

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Although the almost worldwide distributed wild boar Sus scrofa is a well-studied species, little is known about the behaviour of autochthonous, free living wild boar in a spatiotemporal context which can help to better understand wild boar in conflict terms with humans and to find solutions. The use of camera traps is a favourable and non-invasive method to study them. To observe natural behaviour, 60 camera traps were placed for three months in a state forest of 17.8 km2 in the region of the Luneburg Heath in northern Germany. In this area wild boar, roe deer, red deer, wolves and humans are common. The cameras recorded 20 s length video clips when animals passed the detection zone and could be triggered again immediately afterwards. In total 38 distinct behavioural elements were observed, which were assigned to one of seven behavioural categories. The occurrence of the behavioural categories per day was evaluated to compare their frequencies and see which are more essential than others. Generalised Additive Models were used to analyse the occurrence of each behaviour in relation to habitat and activity time. The results show that essential behavioural categories like foraging behaviour, locomotion and vigilance behaviour occurred more frequently than behaviour that “just” served for the well-being of wild boar. These three behavioural categories could be observed together mostly in the night in broad-leaved forests with a herb layer of 50–100%, comfort behaviour occurred mostly at the ponds in coniferous forest. It is also observable that the behavioural categories foraging and comfort behaviour alternated several times during the night which offers the hypothesis that foraging is mostly followed by comfort behaviour. These findings pave the way towards implementing effective control strategies in the wild and animal welfare in captivity.

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Past experiences drive citizen perception of wild boar in urban areas

Cited by 29 publications

References 27 publications

Wild ungulate overabundance in Europe: contexts, causes, monitoring and management recommendations

Wild ungulate overabundance in Europe: contexts, causes, monitoring and management recommendations

Too many wild boar? Modelling fertility control and culling to reduce wild boar numbers in isolated populations

Behavioural patterns of free roaming wild boar in a spatiotemporal context

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