Wild boar are increasingly colonising urban and peri-urban areas across Europe and beyond, creating human-wildlife conflict while raising welfare questions about culling, exclusion, and coexistence management.
Wild boar involved in urban conflict face welfare harms from culling, vehicle collisions, and exposure to urban hazards including rat poison, glass, and traffic. Culling of social animals often separates family groups, leaving piglets without maternal care. Ineffective culling that injures but does not kill animals causes suffering. Boar that become habituated to humans lose natural wariness, increasing their vulnerability to conflict and violence. Management approaches that combine strategic culling to maintain population pressure, feeding bans to reduce habituation, and exclusion fencing around sensitive areas are more effective and welfare-considerate than reactive lethal control alone.