Damages caused by marauding wild boar have led Sever do Vouga municipality to distribute laser wildlife deterrent throughout the municipality.
Aveiro city council explains the equipment is being given to ‘Hunting Zone Management Entities’, who in turn will lend it out to rural landowners and small farmers affected by this scourge.
The problem of wild boar is by no means restricted to the Aveiro district: municipalities everywhere are counting the cost of nighttime rampages through crops/ gardens/ even along footpaths that are transformed by the boars’ ‘rootlings’.
Sever do Vouga mayor Pedro Lobo actually doesn’t blame the boars. He explains the situation is all down to a complete absence of forest planning: “At the moment, due to the lack of planning and management at forestry level, there are practically no chestnut trees, no acorns, no food in the eucalyptus groves, and they (wild boars) move towards populations in search of food”.
Several municipalities, including those in the Algarve, report regular damages caused by wild boar, who, in some areas, are seen casually wandering through villages, even towns, nosing about among rubbish bins, investigating under bushes.
Thus this laser idea: it works on the basis that the boars do not like the ‘focus of a beam of light’: they move away from it, and therefore from the source of food that landowners/ farmers want to preserve.
Of course, it is not a universal solution: the boars will move somewhere else – thus Pedro Lobo stresses there is much more to be done. For a start, he believes there should be a change in the law regarding hunting protection areas (at least in relation to wild boar). Under the law now, there can be no shooting within 500 meters of an industry, 250 meters of a house, or within 100 meters of a national highway. “How can you shoot a wild boar”, with these restrictions, he quizzes. It’s very difficult.
Sever do Vouga has been “a pioneer in creating a regulation to encourage the slaughter of wild boars”, Lobo tells Lusa: the municipality pays €50 for the slaughter of each female and €30 for each male, “having already distributed around a thousand euros to the municipality’s hunting and fishing associations”.
But, now, its new idea to beam infrared lights at these critters, at least to send them on their way, any way, as long as it leads away from Sever do Vouga.
Lusa adds that Pedro Lobo also advocates a reduction in costs inherent in hunting activities, in order to continue to be able to count on the support of hunters, whose cooperation is needed “because without them, nothing can be done”.
Source material: LUSA
