5 ms·
Boar wars: how wild hogs are trashing European cities
- TulliusCicero 7y ago> The arrival of wild boar in town squares and city parks is forcing us to confront a new reality: we are bumping up against the limits of urbanisation. This is a crisis we have largely inflicted on ourselves. City sprawl is driving the species out of its dwindling natural habitats and forcing it to live alongside us. What? That makes no sense. Increasing urbanization in larger cities means higher average population densities where people live, which means more land available for nature, not less. It seems more likely that is an issue of a cultural attitudes towards animals being increasingly cuddly, and hesitant to use hunting, or similarly straightforward and lethal methods, to deal with the encroaching animals.
- mc32 7y agoYeah that goes against the trends of urbanization and zero pop growth. There are other places around the world where increasing human populations will affect nature and wildlife, but it’s not East Asia or Europe.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y agoWould common birds singing louder and longer, an incorporating technical sounds count as affecting wild life? I'm sometimes wondering where the hell this or that sound came from, when walking along lesser traveled paths and know there can't be anything which is making that noise here. After some waiting and searching i can pinpoint some bird, mimicking car/fire alarms, all sorts of beeping noises, and sometimes even sci-fi sound effects. I wonder where they got that from? Television, Ringtones, Computer/Console-Gamers? Anyways, the farther from the cities i go/ride, the less i hear that. Nonetheless, even there it happens.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y agoMore people moving into and living in large cities doesn't necessarily mean the lesser populated land grows, or the built environment there is shrinking. As it happens, whereever i lived formerly and bicycled far as a child/young adult and knew the territory, when compared to now on something like google/bing/whatevermaps the built environment there has massively grown outwards along the few streets connecting the smaller towns and villages. Unfortunately the applications which incorporate a time slider where you can directly compare this lack coverage, both in time and places. Call it a "dark age" ;-) In german this is called "Zersiedelung" which means something like urban sprawl, but it's not something only related to cities, but the whole landscape.
- pintxo 7y agoAlso, we have largely increased the average space per person. So even if people move into cities with higher densities, this might be largely compensated by larger living spaces per person everywhere else (including the City).
- adrianN 7y agoThe real problem seems to be unchecked population growth of wild boars due to the lack of natural predators. They are smart animals and tend to figure out that there is more and tastier food available in the nearby city than in the forest.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoBoars don't fit your mold. They are pests with no natural predators. They need to be culled or they get out of control.
- pvaldes 7y agoBoars have LOTS of natural predators in fact.
- sunkenvicar 7y agoAn invasive species under attack by human “urbanization”. Sounds good to me.
- devoply 7y agoI say we mount AI controlled weapons on the boar's back to give them a fighting chance against humans.
- aussiegreenie 7y agoBoars with friggin lasers....the lasers are controlled by sharks.
- de_watcher 7y agoWell, they've figured out that hunting is prohibited in the cities. What did you expect?
- DocTomoe 7y agoAt least in Berlin, it is not - the city does employ several hunters to limit boar numbers.