Radioactive Boar Roaming German Countryside

Boar pigging out all over Europe



Radioactive Boar In Germany


Boar have occupied a special place in European culture for a long, long time. Hercules hunted the fabled Erymanthian boar, Obelix, France’s national comic hero, feasted on them with never ending gusto and kings, noblemen, cities and other public entities graced their coat of arms with the fierce beast only rivaled by the King of Beasts.

Wild Boar in Munich, Germany

Nowadays boar are more common in many European countries then ever before. In fact, boar have become so numerous that it is not uncommon at all to encounter them in a city park in plain daylight. There they forage and raise their young amidst human visitors to the parks. In the past the wild boar was mainly confined to forests. 
They also led a more or less nocturnal life that separated them nicely from humans. Only hunters and farmers whose fields the beasts raided at night had contact with them. But that was enough to give the wild European boar its reputation as a cantankerous, fierce and aggressive creature. Those were the good old days when kings, knights and war heroes would practice their prowess with arms and prove their courage in battle by confronting cornered boar with only a spear or a knife in their hands.

Modern Germans do no longer have to worry that much about ‘wild’ boar that moved into their parks. They are confronting an entirely new threat from the beasts if one can believe the Thaiindian News. In an article published in early August Aishwarya Bhatt reports the ‘shocking’ news that the radioactive population of boar in Germany is on the rise.

The radioactivity is blamed on the nuclear accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine, almost 25 years ago. Radioactive rain fell on European forests that are home to not only boar but also a wide variety of mushrooms. Unfortunately, boar are fond of mushrooms. Mushrooms in turn absorb lots of water - radioactive water in this case.
Nuclear reactor melts down releasing high levels of radioactivity into the clouds, radioactive rain falls over much of Europe, mushrooms absorb radioactive rainwater, boar dig up and eat mushrooms, hunters kill boar, and humans eat radioactive meat.

Consequently, it is illegal in Germany to sell radioactive boar meat. Neither Spiegel Online nor the author of the article published in Thaiindian News mentions what happens to the ‘illegal’ boar meat.

These days Germans do not only have to worry about being attacked by a sounder of boar out to raid a local potato field but now they also need to be concerned about the purity of boar meat a local hunter has given them. Americans who buy boar meat imported from Europe might want to think Geiger counter when placing their order.

An official from the Bavarian Hunting Association thinks that this problem will stay with us for at least another 50 years.

Wild Boar in Barcelona
Two mature boar and three of their offspring roamed the streets of Barcelona, Spain, after escaping from one of the world’s largest metropolitan parks, reported Brian Gardner in his Revolution Blog on September 17, 2010.
The same group of boar was spotted in the city before. Police just herd them back into their natural habitat. Police and residents in Madrid, Spain, are less tolerant. One of them shot a pregnant sow and was promptly cited by police. The article does not tell us what the citation was for: Shooting a pregnant sow, discharging a firearm in a city or possession of a firearm.

China Farmers under siege from wild boar invasion

Farmers in Eastern China are also struggling with the rapid expansion of the boar population that has grown to 150,000 from an estimated 29,000 a decade ago according to a report in Yahoo News that in turn is based on a news report from AFP, Agence France Press. The explosive growth can be attributed to China’s environmental destruction and the migration of farmers and farm workers into industrial centers. That has left fewer farmers to tend the fields and ward of the boar. In addition, environmental problems have also driven top boar predators such as tigers and wolves to near extinction.

But wait; there is one more important factor to report. According to the China Daily News officials cite the ban on guns and hunting during the World Expo as one of the reasons for the unchecked growth of boar populations. Quoting the Daily News:

‘’ Corn yields in at least one village this year have been reduced by a third as crops have been trampled by the four-legged marauders, and some people have been hurt by the animals, the China Daily said, giving no figures.
The swelling wild boar population also was upsetting the natural balance in other animal populations, press reports said.
Wild boars are known to eat snakes, removing a predator that normally feeds on rats and mice, and as a result, grain-eating rodent populations were on the rise.
Some local farmers were stepping up use of traps and setting up electric fences around their farms to ward off the boars, the China Daily said.’’

Wild Boar Charges Cameraman in Hong Kong

You would not consider Hong Kong prime boar habitat, would you? The city is better known for high population density, commercialism and high rise buildings than for wild boar. Yet boar still find space to live among the hustle and bustle. And if they don’t, they just run down a cameraman to make room.

See for yourself: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/weirdnewsvideo/7876971/Wild-boar-charges-cameraman-in-Hong-Kong.html

I found it a little confusing at first because it looks like the video is running backwards. But eventually all falls into place. No pun intended.

Back to Europe.

Rampaging wild boar draw pleas for military response

Radioactive or not boar are thriving well in Germany, too well for some farmers in the Rhineland, a major wine and crop growing center of Western Germany. The boar raided and destroyed hundreds of hectares of crops and damaged the maize and rape seed fields so significantly that combines were brought to a halt, as the English ‘Independent’ reported on September 06, 2010 in an article by Tony Paterson writing from Berlin. Moreover, rampaging boar also invade small towns to forage for food. Enraged farmers and citizens of small towns occupied by invading boar forces have called on the German military to respond in force to these violation of city territories because hunters alone can no longer control the problem boar.

Jokes about squadrons of army tanks racing across fertile fields in hot pursuit of invading boar are now almost as numerous as the boar themselves.

Hunting organizations are deadest against using soldiers to cull boar. The Independent quotes one hunting group: “We don't want to wage a war against wild animals," said Kurt Michael, the president of the region's hunters' association. He dismissed the idea as ridiculous. "What would the army do? Attack them with Tornado fighter planes?" he asked. Local authorities as well as the army also criticize the plan as cruel and unconstitutional. 

Hunters shot a record number of almost 450,000 boar last year. This is the highest number on record since 1880. Yet, not to be outgunned by hunters, boar doubled their numbers annually in recent years.

Wildlife experts blame the absence of top predators as one of the causes for the uncontrolled expansion of boar populations. Mild winters and the abundance of corn grown for fuel production and of rape seed fields are also main contributors to the explosion of boar populations. Boar like to feast on corncobs and to use the high cornstalks as cover and bedding areas.

In response, hunting organizations increased the annual harvest quotas for boar considerably. Allowing also for the first time the use of strong spotlights for night hunting. Some hunters are even considering administering contraceptive pills to “their” boar. "This should be possible if we can distribute enough contraceptive bait in the right areas," said Josef Weitershagen, of the Rhineland-Palatinate hunters' association.” (The Independent).

Besides the entertainment value of these reports I find the articles useful in illustrating one important aspect: The article about rampaging boar in China clearly identifies the absence of guns as one of the reasons for burgeoning boar numbers. On the other hand, German hunters quite obviously missed the train by putting game protection before the need to keep boar in check.

My conclusion is that though we know that hunting is an effective means of boar control, it must take place before a local wild boar population has reached the point of no return. In other words before they have grown so strong in numbers that the can easily outbreed any losses from   hunting. Once that point is reached only radical, cruel and inhumane methods of boar control will have any decisive effect.  These undesirable methods also must be applied to very wide areas. Otherwise boar from habitats that were not affected by ruthless control methods will simply move into the areas that remained unaffected by radical boar eradication.

I have refrained from reporting on an article that illustrates this indirectly. Swedish boar are moving into Norway in ever increasing numbers. Sweden has dense boar populations while Norway remained mainly boar free in the past years. This is about to change now unless Norwegian hunters step up to the plate quickly to tackle the problem.

What does this all mean for wild pigs in California?  If you can believe farmers and ranchers, wild pigs destroying crops and habitat overrun their lands. Complaints are abundant. On the other hand, income from hunting access to the ranches is a welcome addition to the overall annual income from many properties. Consequently, landowners may have a tendency to protect their wild pigs to insure continued income in the coming years. German owners of hunting areas (shoots) applied the same logic setting preservation of game over population control. Now the genie is out of the bottle and the big head scratching is on.

Considering the last mild and wet winter California farmlands could also be at the edge of an almost unstoppable explosion of wild pigs, unless cool minds prevail and the DFG and landowners together find ways to allow hunters easier and more affordable access to private lands.

PJJ