Hong Kong’s wild boar population is becoming increasingly bold and, as government figures revealed earlier this week, 2018 is on track to be the year with the most number of wild boar-related complaints since the authorities started compiling the numbers in 2013.
As Coconuts HK reported last March, the increasing number of wild boar complaints is partly a result of the city’s growing wild boar population. A large part of that is due to Hong Kong’s boars no longer having to face other predators that once roamed the area like tigers and Asian leopards.
One way the government has been trying to control the wild boar population is to replace their hunting program with a contraception scheme that involves capturing, sterilizing, injecting wild boars with a contraceptive vaccine before releasing them back into the wild. The pilot scheme was launched in February, and, as of December, the authorities have captured and sterilized 54 wild boars
One lawmaker, Kenneth Lau, says the pilot scheme is failing and thinks it might be time for the government to either bring back the hunting program or consider re-introducing the wild boars’ natural predators into the city (yes, effectively suggesting that Hong Kong bring lions and tigers into the city in order to control the wild boar population).
According to HK01, Lau made the comments during a Q&A session with Chief Executive Carrie Lam that took place at the Legislative Council yesterday.
Lam said that authorities, like Lau, were concerned with the city’s unsustainable wild boar population and said that she would ask experts to look into the suggestion of re-introducing natural predators.
Lau’s suggestion was quickly dismissed by Cheung Ka-shing, a Senior Wetland & Fauna Conservation Officer from the AFCD, who told district councilors in Tai Po today that it would be too high-risk to introduce a natural predator as a way of controlling the wild boar population.
