The Hunt for Kinder Practices: Minimising Harm to Wild Boar Welfare, Insights from a Qualitative Study in Wallonia (Belgium)

Abstract

As in the rest of Europe, the Belgian boar population has been tending to increase, posing new challenges to management by hunting. Moreover, in autumn 2018, the African Swine Fever (ASF) virus penetrated Belgian territory. In response to this so-called overpopulation and to this health crisis, wild boars were massively culled by hunters and other nature managers. The wild boar was then debated by some stakeholders as a sensitive animal and that its welfare mattered even if it must still be killed. In this article, we explore the management of wild boar through a qualitative sociological survey focusing on damage to the welfare of wild animals and ways of limiting it. This survey is part of an innovative process launched by the Walloon Region and the Walloon Council for Animal Welfare (CWBEA). It was conducted in order to qualitatively describe current hunting practices and their impact on animal welfare; it then integrated knowledge from the human sciences into the CWBEA’s work; and, finally, those from the hunting world were invited to debate with the usual animal welfare advocates and managers. By identifying, based on the knowledge of hunting stakeholders and wildlife specialists, a multitude of issues and avenues for action to limit the harm to the welfare of wild boars, this paper highlights the relevance of an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to the welfare issues of wild animals. It supports the hypothesis that animal welfare advocates can work toward establishing new norms in human/nonhuman relationships in collaboration with hunters but also to include wild animals—wild boars in this case—as sentient beings whose welfare must be considered and debated in discussions on global health.