A few months ago, a wild boar dug up a Turdetana figurine in a dried-up lagoon in Doñana, an anecdote that – beyond the fights between administrations that it provoked – presented a sympathetic image of the animal. But the reality is that wild boars are now nothing more than the villains of the national park, a situation caused by their reproductive success (there has been a management plan to control the population for many years) and by the drought. And how does the latter affect its role as villain? Well, because the lack of water allows it to reach places that were previously flooded, which makes it easier for it to attack nests, some even of protected species.
“The wild boar is criticized because it does things like the wild boar and because it is one of the few species that is not doing badly,” laments researcher Luis Santamaría, from the Department of Conservation Biology and Global Change of the Doñana Biological Station. Its overabundance, the fact that it has no natural predators in the environment and its omnivorous condition make it very present in the park, leaving its mark on pastures and nesting areas, as happened in May with the colonies of blackberries and herons.
But for Santamaría, “criticism confuses the symptom with the problem,” and he says that these episodes of predation “show above all the lack of water,” which in turn damages the weakened vegetation. Since the marsh is dry, the wild boar finds itself facing a highway to reach nests that, under normal water conditions, it would not be able to access. “And what is normal in the park is that an omnivore eats the prey,” he adds, to which he adds his surprise because “it seems that some species have the right to prey in the park, like the lynx, and others do not.”
Lack of water, the underlying problem
“The best control over the wild boars in Doñana is exercised by water, which prevents them from reaching the aquatic colonies,” says Ecologistas en Acción, which, together with SEO-Birdlife, reported in May that the nesting areas of the settlements in the area had been destroyed. destroyed. Pike Cerrado Garrido of the José Antonio Valverde reception center, in the Sevillian municipality of Aznalcázar. For the environmental organization, the solution to the problem is essentially to restore the old course of the Guadiamar River. “We must recover the surface water inputs and maintain the underground inputs, so that the flood reaches a depth and duration sufficient to complete reproduction and keep the wild boars at bay.”
Luis Santamaría insists that “the underlying problem is that there is a chronic water deficit”, a “very serious injury” with which the park was already born because it was carried out in parallel with a modification of the marshes that reduced the water levels by two. thirds. resources that they received, which arrived precisely from Guadiamar. “All this is a direct consequence of human impact”, he emphasizes, although in this case there is a curious paradox: the dead arm through which the river previously flowed has become an important nesting place like bird colonies.
The contradiction arises when the enclave becomes overcrowded, leading to large nutrient discharges, which carry “a high risk of toxic algae blooms” and the fear that it could become a source of botulism. And therein lies the dilemma: the birds have few safe places “and when you do, it ends up being a problem.”
Population reduction by shooting
But to return to the wild boar, “it has adapted very well to anthropized environments”, especially outside places like Doñana, where hunting is prohibited. This means that things are going very well and that every year a “significant” culling program is developed, in which park rangers slaughter hundreds of these animals.
“Culling them is not typical of conservation actions in a national park,” criticize Ecologistas en Acción. According to him, the action should consist of implementing a live capture system that allows individuals to be selected to release healthy wild boar specimens and sacrifice the rest, “always respecting the animal welfare guaranteed in the breeding.”
And these animals “are a reservoir of tuberculosis for livestock,” confirms Santamaría, who admits that there is no consensus on the best way to deal with this situation. “A somewhat blind control is being carried out,” he laments, while the environmental organization recalls that the wild boars of Doñana are mostly hybrids, products of crossbreeding with domestic pigs, “and they present serious health problems due to the fact that they carry tuberculosis and even hepatitis.
An “illegitimate” predator
So what can be done to protect nests in a situation like the current one, without water and with a large wild boar population, although it has decreased slightly in recent years? Well, the solution for now is to fence off the nesting areas, although the protections implemented in the Aznalcázar area have proven ineffective. “Installing fences is a short-term solution that does not solve the underlying problem” of the lack of water, emphasizes the researcher from the Biological Station, not to mention that if a national park seeks a solution based on fences “it means that something is missing.”
“Human management tries to mitigate the degrading conditions imposed by the environment,” Santamaría sums up. In the background, there is also the absence of predators, since the wolf has disappeared and the seven species of carnivores present in the park do not really represent a risk for the one who is now the villain of the film: fox, mongoose, badger, lynx, wild and domestic cat, genet and otter. And all this with the irony that “there are predators that are considered legitimate and the wild boar is as if it were illegitimate, because it has no interest and its prey does.”
