The Growing Wildlife Crisis
Human beings, as the dominant species on Planet Earth, care deeply about how our activities have been threatening the survival of various species, from whales and dolphins to the Brazilian Golden Monkey, with hundreds of ‘causes célèbres’ in between.
But there is now another kind of wildlife story in play – of an inverse nature – all over the world, in which wild and dangerous animals are breeding out of control and becoming community nuisances, economic burdens and even security threats for the people.
Roast boar
Feral hogs are a fearsome example of this, as the big, bad and smelly swine reproduce fast and spread like the plague.
In the latest news, France’s national railway was forced to declare war on the ‘wild boars that are running amok on tracks.’
Rampaging Boars: A French Railway Nightmare
The beasts that the French call ‘sangliers’ cause thousands of hours of delays and millions of euros worth of damage every year – and even the million licensed French hunters can’t cope with them.
The Telegraph reported:
“Despite culling around a million per year, it is estimated that France’s wild boar population has ballooned to more than two million today thanks to plentiful food supplies and larger litters in milder winters. That’s up from 300,000 in 1995. As well as uprooting farmers’ fields and private gardens, boars have become the bête noire of SNCF, the national rail operator, which is teaming up with hunters using heat-seeking drones to deal with the growing problem.”
It may not seem so, but at a quarter of a ton, the hogs can cause major damage to trains and pose a serious security threat.
Nowadays, almost every day sees some kind of incident involving ‘les sangliers.’
“In late November, passengers traveling on a train from Caen to Paris were subjected to a “nightmarish” seven hours of delays after their train stopped in a storm due to trees on the tracks only to then crash into four wild boars, which damaged the train.”
Sliced boar with au jus
The train electricity was cut off, so passengers remained in total darkness for three and a half hours with no air-conditioning, ventilation, water, food or toilets.
In 2020, there were 619 wild boar train collisions in France. By 2022 there were 876 and in 2024 there were 1,104.
“Hunters are not allowed to shoot boars near the tracks for obvious security reasons. Indeed, there were 90 accidental shootings of people during the 2021-22 season, and eight deaths.”
Yes, you read it right: not only can’t French hunters deal with the hog problem, they are also shooting people left and right in the process.
But they are allowed to use heat-seeking drones.
“France is by no means the only country facing rocketing boar populations. Across Italy, there are an estimated 2.3 million boars. Each year, they cause €200 million of damage to crops, as well as traffic accidents when they are hit by vehicles while crossing roads. One aggressive animal bit a boy’s genitals on an island off Sardinia last September.
The North American Invasion
Boar soup
Today, they are not an uncommon site in certain European cities, approaching Paris and feeding off bins in Rome and Barcelona.”
And while the feral pigs are not native to North America, they are now a 2.5-billion-a-year problem affecting at least 35 states.
As an example, an ‘exploding population’ of ‘super pigs’ from Canada has become a different kind of invasion threatening the northern US border.
These animals are ‘very hard-to-eradicate’ – meaning it’s nearly impossible to kill them fast enough!
Associated Press reported:
“In Canada, the wild pigs roaming Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba pose a new threat. They are often crossbreeds that combine the survival skills of wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine to create a “super pig” that’s spreading out of control.
Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and one of Canada’s leading authorities on the problem, calls feral swine, ‘the most invasive animal on the planet’ and ‘an ecological train wreck’.”
Canadian farmers raising wild boar faced a market collapse, and some had the wonderful idea of just setting the animals free, starting a process that’s already irreversible in some Canadian provinces.
“It turned out that the pigs were very good at surviving Canadian winters. Smart, adaptable and furry, they eat anything, including crops and wildlife. They tear up land when they root for bugs and crops. They can spread devastating diseases to hog farms like African swine fever. And they reproduce quickly. A sow can have six piglets in a litter and raise two litters in a year.
That means 65% or more of a wild pig population could be killed every year and it will still increase.”
Texas’ Battle Against the Wild Pig Surge
Fricasse (bone in)
But don’t you go around thinking the problem is only affecting the northern latitudes, because a quick look down south at Texas will show a similar problem.
A report arose in early January of ‘a pack of feral hogs’ bringing chaos to a suburb of Irving, Texas.
Tearing up landscaping, messing through trash bags, in a local manifestation of a problem that reportedly plagues much of the Lone Star state.
New York Post reported:
“’My first thought was, like, well, I can go shoot them’, [homeowner Eric] Mendez tells the outlet. ‘But I’m like, yeah, I’m in a neighborhood. I can’t just go out there and start blasting’.”
Mendez had to resort to a slingshot and making noise clapping two pieces of wood together to scare off the hogs – but this only ensures that they will become someone else’s problem down the road.
“These beasts also reproduce at a rapid rate — with a sow able to birth two litters a year of six to eight piglets each. They are known to attack both humans and pets and bring with them an economic burden.
Feral hogs in the Lone Star State cause damage estimated to be more than $400 million annually, according to the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension.”
