Austria: Wild Boar Hunting is Political Activism
Planned amendment to hunting legislation in Lower Austria has precisely the opposite effect.
«Lower Austria is increasingly becoming a battleground against nature,» says Madeleine Petrovic, President of the Vienna Animal Protection Association (WTV).
Specifically, Petrovic is referring to the planned amendment to Lower Austria's hunting legislation, which in the truest sense of the word «takes aim» at wild boar with nothing but pure political activism.
Night-vision devices for hobby hunters
The wild boar population is to be drastically reduced in the coming years. To make things even easier for hobby hunters, night-vision devices and lamps are to be permitted for hunting the animals in darkness. Officially, of course, to prevent the spread of swine fever. The amendment is scheduled to pass through the Lower Austrian state parliament on 21 November.
Experts such as veterinarians and wildlife biologists consider this hysteria to be entirely unwarranted. The Czech Republic demonstrated back in 2017 how to deal sensibly with a disease outbreak. It is therefore completely excessive to arm hobby hunters in this way, explains Petrovic. At the time, the affected outbreak zone in the Czech Republic was fenced off over a large area, and the wild boar within the cordoned zone were killed professionally and with as little animal suffering as possible, with the assistance of police forces equipped with modern technology (including thermal imaging cameras). Professionals such as law enforcement officers always handle such situations more effectively when needed, says the WTV President.
Furthermore, experts also fear that when night vision devices are used in wild boar hunting, the animals learn quickly and within a very short time become far more cautious and thus practically impossible to hunt. “And as paradoxical as it may sound: the more wild boars are hunted, the more strongly they reproduce. This connection is being pointed out not only by an increasing number of scientists, but also by a long-term study from France. In Lower Austria, however, such research findings are consistently ignored, as always,” says Petrovic. The intensive hunting pressure therefore leads to a significantly higher rate of reproduction, stimulates fertility, and also accelerates the spread of disease.
Humans are the carriers
Completely overlooked is also the fact that the main danger regarding swine fever does not come from wild boars at all. Researchers today are almost unanimously of the opinion that the disease is spread by humans: for example, through the transport of meat and sausage products, truck drivers, motorway rest stops, discarded scraps of ham and salami sandwiches, as well as through hunting tourism, whereby hobby hunters come into direct contact with infected animals and pathogens adhere to hunting clothing and trophies.
The legislative change in Lower Austria is therefore entirely misguided political activism, which distracts from the actual causes of the growing wild boar populations. For it is precisely the brutal extermination of smaller and larger predators that has caused the call for the culling of wild boars to become so loud in the first place.
Madelaine Petrovic, President of the Vienna Animal Welfare Association (WTV)
The Vienna Animal Welfare Association has therefore sent an official statement to the state government, explicitly calling for the use of night vision devices to be abandoned and/or for the protection periods for these animals to be extended. In addition, the WTV is also calling for the establishment of protection periods for small predators (foxes, martens, etc.). The killing of mother animals during the rearing of their young leads to the slow and agonising death of the cubs. The shooting of (allegedly) poaching dogs and cats should likewise be prohibited.
