Do more about the boars.
That, in essence, was the message from Southern District councillors, as they criticized authorities for not doing enough to curb the city’s growing wild pig population on the heels of recent attacks in the city.
According to on.cc, councillors yesterday met with officials from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD), which has previously been under pressure to reveal more about its pilot wild boar contraceptive program.
At least some information was forthcoming. According to documents presented by the department, some 101 wild boars have been captured across Hong Kong since the program started in September last year.
Of these, 33 female boars have been treated with a contraceptive treatment which inhibits reproduction between four and six years, while an additional six received permanent surgical sterilization.
Meanwhile, about 72 of the captured boars were relocated away from urban areas to country parks.
The majority of wild boars caught, treated and released came from the Southern District, where some 71 were captured, 17 given the contraceptive shot and four given surgery.
During the meeting, Cheung Ka-shing, a senior wetland and fauna conservation officer, noted that all the captured boars were fitted with a GPS tracker.
This, he said, showed some of the animals continued to approach residential areas in order to find food.
District councillors, well at least some, weren’t impressed.
One, Paul Zimmerman, called the AFCD’s pilot scheme “time-consuming” and “inefficient” given that wild boars can breed quite quickly.
Councillors also levelled criticisms at the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) for not disposing of waste properly, with councillors likening it to the government feeding wild boars.
Democratic party vice president and councillor Lo Kin-hei, urged the authorities to consider looking into introducing tougher legislation to ban the feeding of wild animals.
Currently, most residents are warned not to feed wild animals and handed a fine of HK$1,500 (US$190).
Cheung said the AFCD was open to the possibility of regulating the feeding of wild animals, but added that legislating on the issue might be difficult.
In response to Zimmerman’s concerns, Cheung said that the department was seeking more staff to help with the pilot scheme.
Cheung added that wild boars also move around a lot, and that they needed to gather enough data from the wild boars’ location before the department figures out what to do next.
A senior health inspector from the FEHD Lau Wai-kwai said that whey would consider measures including raising fences around dumpsters to prevent wild boars from foraging for food.
The concerns over the wild boar contraceptive program come one month after a wild boar attacked three people in Wong Tai Sin last month.
The number of wild boar related complaints in the past couple of years has increased from 294 in 2013, to a whopping 738 in 2017. For the first six months of this year, there have been 380 wild boar-related complaints.
As Coconuts Hong Kong reported, the increasing number of wild boar complaints is partly a result of the city’s growing wild boar population, with experts concerned that the growing wild boar population is becoming unsustainable.
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