Wild boars in Italy are proving to be a growing menace as they have taken to colonising towns and cities.
The animals have been seen around the outskirts of Rome, Genoa and Naples as well as other cities, feeding on refuse and rubbish bins along with destroying gardens in their search.
One cheeky female boar was photographed trotting past a bus stop outside of Rome and was probably part of a group that lives in the local protected regional park.
Traditionally, boars have long been part of the Italian landscape, sticking to the woods and hills of the countryside.
But with a population which has rocketed from 600,000 in a decade to a million, they have begun to encroach on urban areas and conflicts with humans are on the increase. Several people have needed hospitalisation after being attacked and a number of dogs have died as a result.
The boar’s powerful body weight of up to 200 lbs and sharp tusks make it a formidable enemy and it is at its most threatening when young piglets are near and during the breeding season from November to January.
Boars have no natural predators save wolves which are not in sufficient numbers in Italy to keep the population down. Many local people would be glad to see trained marksmen reduce the numbers by shooting them.
Germany, where the wolf numbers are slowly increasing, is having similar problems with a growing boar population, but there the situation is compounded by radiation so high in much of the meat that it is unfit for human consumption.
This appears to be a legacy of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. In 2012 it was made mandatory for hunters to have killed wild boar in Saxony tested for radiation. Carcasses that exceed the safe limit of must be destroyed.
In just one year, 297 out of 752 boar tested in Saxony were over the limit, and there have been cases in Germany of boar testing dozens of times over the limit.
