Non-lethal wild boar control – ensuring highly attractive foraging and birthing habitats

I believe that if we can only 'manage wildlife' (i.e., avoid conflict) with lethal methods, humanity and civilization have not gotten as far as we claim we have. One of the controversial species that supposedly breeds over thresholds of human tolerance and ecological capacity (within a world where carrying capacity has been reduced through encroachment …

Starting new dynasties – female dispersal in wild boar

Last week I was reading materials on dispersal in wild boar (e.g., Casas-Díaz et al., 2013; Jerina, K. et al., 2014). In many large ungulate species, females tend to be more philopatric than males (daughters are often accepted in mother's sounder/herd/territory while sons are evicted) and it was thereby interesting to find that some females …

How do wild boar use space during winter?

Wild boar males tend to spend summers separate from females who unite in sounders to raise their young. This rather old publication by Dardaillion, M. (1988) offers a nice review of wild boar seasonal grouping patterns. I have seen videos where male boars interact with sounders (possibly young males born in the previous spring/summer or …

Wild boar poor eyesight leading to compromise behaviour with regard to illumination in predator systems on rugged / dense canopy terrains?

A while ago I read the publication 'An analysis or intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting the activity of a nocturnal species: The wild boar' by Brivio, F. et al., 2017. As I was reading the publication, I was wondering about a certain aspect discussed in it. Wild boar are a species that supposedly has not …

Rooting activity by mammals and fungal organism dispersal – with the focus on vegetation community regeneration, colonization and succession dynamics

This post was inspired, once more, by wild boar as I have been considering their beneficial effects on ecosystems. However, rooting activity (and, indeed, burrowing activity or other types of foraging that result in disturbance at the root level) is performed by many other species that can be herbivores (cervids, voles etc.), omnivores (bears etc.) …

Experienced vs. inexperienced wild boar sounders

I live in a smaller town surrounded by fields of intensive agriculture. There is a countryside road which I sometimes take for walks and I regularly meet wild boar there. This experience has taught me to appreciate them. I grew up with stories that wild boar were ferocious and frightsome. My experience during these walks, …

Potential facilitation / engineering by wild boar

There are many wild boar near where I live and on country roads I meet them almost every time, especially, later in the summer. I have been sad to observe the lack of scientific studies dedicated to the benefits that wild boar provide as ecosystem engineers. I have found several articles dedicated to eagle fern …