Prague, March 14 (CTK) – Wild boars that have multiplied excessively in the Czech Republic in the past few years have changed their strategy of survival, seeking shelter in towns more often, and they have started being aggressive and attacking people, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) wrote on Tuesday.
It seems that wild boars have declared war on people, MfD says, referring to gamekeepers’ experience.
While 80 years ago, some 500 boars were shot dead in the Czech Republic a year and in the 1960s it was a few thousand, last year hunters shot dead 185,000 boars, MfD writes.
There might be up to ten million wild boars in the Czech Republic with a population of 10.5 million, Lukas Linhart from the Czech Hunters’ Association, told MfD.
Boars are changing their behaviour patterns they used for thousands of years. They are more intelligent than dogs and can prepare for a man’s attack. Instead of escape, they choose an active defence more and more frequently, MfD writes.
They, for instance, remember where a hunter was lurking last time and they send there some “scouts” from the group to check it out or they even use their own young as a bait, Linhart said.
Besides, wild boars retreat to towns on purpose since they have experienced that unlike forests and fields, they do not face shooting between blocks of flats, MfD adds.
Most recently, a quite large group of boars was monitored near a primary school and on the edge of a large housing estate in Prague-Modrany.
In the famous spa town of Karlovy Vary, west Bohemia, wild boars are damaging spa parks and they have even appeared at the busy bus station, MfD says.
The number of traffic accidents caused by boars as well as their attacks on dogs and hunters have been rising along with the damage they cause to forests, fields and towns. People start being scared, MfD writes.
Hunters calm them down, saying wild boars attack only if they are injured or feel threatened, for instance, by a hunter with a gun. Nevertheless, they confirm that boars’ aggression has been on the rise and that they attack hunters and gamekeepers more often.
MfD writes that politicians blame gamekeepers for the escalating problem with the excessive boar population, while gamekeepers blame farmers for the situation. Farmers, for their part, demand compensation for damaged crops from hunters.
It is true that while boars have adapted to new conditions quickly, clerks and politicians have neglected the problem.
Only recently, the Agriculture Ministry has tried to impede the steep rise in the boar population.
The ministry is completing an amendment to the law on gamekeeping that will embed duties of gamekeepers and change the landscape to be less convenient for wild boars. Farmers will be obliged to divide large fields by broad belts with different crops where it will be easier to hunt running boars, MfD writes.
