Factors affecting the crop damage by wild boar (Sus scrofa) and effects of population control in the Ticino and Lake Maggiore Park (North-western Italy)

Abstract

Wild boar foraging impacts the crops, pastures, and meadows causing remarkable losses to agricultural income. Protected areas located in plains, such as the Ticino Valley Natural Park, are characterized by the coexistence of important natural habitats and intensive agricultural areas. In the Park, from 2010 to 2017, 49% of the complaints report an event of damage to maize and 43% to meadows. The total expense for reimbursements of the maize amounted to € 439,341.52, with damages concentrated in May, after sowing period and between August and September, during the milky stage of maize. For meadows reimbursements amounted to € 324,768.66, with damage events concentrated in February and March. To reduce damage to crops, the Park administration carried out lethal control of the wild boar population. From 2006 to 2017, the most used control method was culling from hunting hides. In our analysis, we did not find significant relationships between the number of shot boars and the damage amount. The factors that determine the decrease of damage probability to crops are mainly related to human disturbance and the characteristics of the fields. The predictive model of damage risk built comparing damaged and undamaged fields showed a good predictive ability. The population viability analyses showed that it is impossible to obtain a drastic reduction of population with the current harvest rate. By tripling it and focusing on the females and sub-adult a numerical reduction of 50% of the population would be achievable in 7 years and the probability of population survival would be halved in 3 years.

Managing the Conflict of Human–Wildlife Coexistence: A Community-Based Approach

“…König et al [62] presented related findings demonstrating that human-wildlife conflict increases in agricultural areas when crops are colonized by wildlife species as new habitats. Since the early 2000s, efforts to isolate wild animals from agricultural areas have used crop avoidance techniques, such as culling, supplemental feeding and electrical fencing [63], demonstrating that the human-wild boar conflict is more severe in rural areas. The residents of Trikala are very worried about the problem due to population growth as nearly seven out of ten report that the wild boar density is "high and very high" in this area, and nearly 32% discuss the issue and express their concerns "often and very often".…”

Mapping crop damage by wild boars using multi‐scale risk modeling in Northeast China

“…We also noticed that the peak of settlement density was relatively low in the response curve (Figure 3), which represents an array of small villages and their territories, with low human population and scattered farmlands, where wild boars perceive little danger. Furthermore, most researchers that reported wild boars avoided human disturbance were in regions where hunting was part of management (Ohashi et al 2012, Ikeda et al 2019, Cappa et al 2021, Rosalino et al 2022). By contrast, harvest of wild boars had been prohibited in Jilin Province for decades.…”

“…In Luxembourg, wild boar damage accounted for 4.7 million USD in compensation schemes between 1997 and 2006 (Schley et al 2008). Compensation schemes amount to millions of USD each year in other European countries as well (Lombardini et al 2017, Cappa et al 2021).…”

Analyzing factors influencing wild boar damage and verifying the effect of countermeasures in a regional park located in a mountainous area

“…Although few previous studies targeted wild boar damage in the park, the main contributing determinants are related to human disturbance, including distance from railways, main roads, and buildings in Ticino Valley Natural Park, Italy (Cappa et al, 2021), and the negative curved relationship between richness of plant species and the extent of wild pigs in Namadgi National Park, Australia were clari ed (Hone J., 2002). However, these studies addressed large natural settings or national parks with forests, not regional parks for recreational activities.…”