Hunting activity causes the species to multiply
Scientific data from Italy also irrefutably demonstrate that the increase in wild boar populations — and with it the rise in agricultural damage and traffic accidents — is a direct consequence of hunting pressure on this species.
Study from Italy confirms the connection
In a report, Prof. Andrea Mazzatenta of the University of Teramo and expert in “pheromones” demonstrates that the increase in the wild boar population is hunting-driven.
Prof. Mazzatenta has shown through precise research, data and graphs that the primary cause of the proliferation and spread of wild boar in the Abruzzo region is intensive recreational hunting. In hunting-free areas such as national parks, this problem does not exist, particularly when wolves are present.
Pheromones of the lead sow
As Prof. Mazzatenta explains, wild boar sounders are dominated by “matriarchal” females. Due to the emission of pheromones by the lead sow, which suppresses the fertility of lower-ranking females, only she reproduces within the sounder.
In practice, recreational hunters shoot the matriarchal females during wild boar hunts, causing the sounders to break apart and triggering a “liberating” response in the other, lower-ranking females, which immediately enter oestrus, reproduce multiple times within the same year, and in turn form new sounders.
Court suspends wild boar hunting
A ruling by the Regional Administrative Court of Tuscany led to the suspension of wild boar hunting in braccata drives, in order to highlight the connection between hunting pressure and the increase in wild boar populations.
Overall, all efforts — including illegal raised hides, night-vision devices, hunting in darkness, and so forth — on the part of recreational hunters in recent years have yielded no results. Wild boar continue to multiply uncontrollably precisely because of recreational hunting.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
