Hunting? It increases the number of wild boars: "Indiscriminate killing without any planning or selection leads to the paradoxical result of increasing the population."
Paolo Bruguglio, medical director of the well-known Duemari veterinary clinic, weighs in on the debate sparked by the terrible accident that killed Ciriaco Meloni, a 44-year-old doctor from Bitti, on the Sassari-Olbia highway after his car struck a wild boar crossing the road.
Following the tragedy, numerous voices have raised the alarm about the excessive proliferation of ungulates in Sardinia and the need to contain them. The solution suggested by many is hunting: the more animals killed, so argues those who advocate it, the fewer road hazards there are.
Briguglio debunks this theory: " The truth, as often happens, is a little more complex than those who always have easy solutions at their fingertips would have us believe."
According to the veterinarian, "There are many wild boars; they have every right, as wild animals, to roam the land, including the right to cross roads. They sometimes cause accidents, fortunately in most cases only damaging cars. But certainly not intentionally."
In nature, Briguglio explains, "population control is carried out by natural predators; in Europe, these are essentially wolves, bears, and lynxes." These predators are absent on the island. Instead, there are "favorable factors, all caused by humans; technically, they are called anthropogenic factors. These include milder winters, an abundance of food (waste, agricultural waste, and crops), and the abandonment of rural areas, resulting in increased forest cover and uncultivated fields." These factors "push toward a marked increase in survival and reproduction rates." Furthermore, in Sardinia, "hybridization with domestic pigs raised in the wild has certainly occurred, increasing litter size and reducing their fear of humans. And this has been one of the main reasons for the persistence of African Swine Fever for years." The result? "A more adaptable and more fecund population than the original one."
The most immediate responses are: "Let's kill as many as possible, let's hunt year-round, and let's also shoot in the protected areas where these animals take refuge."
The solution to complex problems, the expert continues, "is often anything but simple. But to gain the consensus of simple minds, you need to propose appealing and quick solutions, because if they don't work, it will always be someone else's fault. In reality," and here comes the crux of the argument, "it has been abundantly demonstrated that indiscriminate killing without any planning or selection results in the paradoxical result of increasing the population. Wild boars are social animals; they live in families within which there is a precise matriarchal hierarchy that also regulates birth control. Only dominant females reproduce, thus avoiding overcrowding that could exceed the carrying capacity of the family's territory."
If the family is destroyed and dispersed by the drive and "animals are killed at random , the consequence is the dispersion of young females across the territory, which then reproduce with a reproductive efficiency much higher than that of the older, dominant females. And lo and behold, the population has grown significantly the following year and the wild boars colonize areas where they were not previously present."
Nature, Briguglio emphasizes, "never does things randomly. If I threaten a species, it responds by implementing all its survival strategies; sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it doesn't. Wild boars always succeed; they're little tanks. It's called 'compensatory reproduction': the increase in fertility and reproductive success in response to artificially reducing density."
Enrico Fresu