Wild boar are intelligent, socially complex animals whose welfare during hunting, trapping, and population management is rarely considered despite growing awareness of their sentience.
Wild boar welfare is an emerging area gaining traction as the evidence for pig-level sentience strengthens. Traditional hunting methods including driven hunts expose multiple animals to acute fear and injury stress, with welfare costs distributed across the entire sounder even when kill rates are low. Trap-and-relocate methods avoid lethality but impose prolonged confinement stress. If population management is necessary, welfare-considered hunting approaches prioritise clean kills, minimise pursuit time, and avoid disruption of family groups. Wild boar in areas of human-wildlife conflict deserve consideration of non-lethal deterrent methods before lethal control. Management decisions should explicitly weigh welfare costs of all options.