Wild Pigs Must Be Caught And Killed: Concern Group

Growing public concern about wild boars venturing into residential areas shows current efforts to control numbers have failed and it is time to start culling them, a campaign group said on Sunday.

The government received 738 complaints about wild boars in 2017, compared to 583 the year before. The latest figures show there were 679 reports made regarding the animals in the first nine months of 2018.

Officials say that although the pigs are powerful and they can cause serious injury or even kill a person, they usually only attack if they are provoked.

There have been 14 cases of members of the public being injured by wild boars over the past two decades – and all but two occurred in the past two years.

At RTHK's City Forum, the spokesman for the group Feral Pig Hong Kong, Wesley Ho, called on the government to cull the animals, saying using contraception was no longer working.

"To a certain degree, it was successful, provided that the total number of the boars was not that big. But now I believe the boars have gone up to around, probably more than 200 or 300 in number. If they do what they did in the past, I don't think that will have any effect," Ho said.

But Ho's demand for a cull came under fire from Mark Mak, the executive chairman of the Veterinary Services Society.

"We can talk about all kinds of methods instead of just killing the animals," Mak said, although he conceded that wild boars are causing a nuisance in some areas.

The government says people feeding the pigs increases the chance of others coming into contact with the animals because once the boars become accustomed to accepting food they will scavenge near residential areas or even actively approach humans.

The authorities have said that individual boars could be put down if they are considered to be "high risk", for example if they have already attacked someone, or if they are easily agitated.