Wild boar populations are expanding across Europe and Asia as they adapt to human landscapes. Their welfare is affected by hunting practices, urban conflict, and disease management.
Wild boar welfare sits at the intersection of wildlife management, agricultural pest control, and hunting tradition. As highly intelligent, social animals with complex family structures, wild boar experience both the acute welfare costs of hunting and trapping and the chronic welfare challenges of living in increasingly human-modified landscapes with unpredictable food resources and human conflict. Management killing for population control and disease management (African Swine Fever containment) is often conducted with inadequate attention to welfare-positive methods. The welfare ideal is hunting and trapping methods that minimize suffering duration, with avoidance of the worst outcomes such as foot-trap injuries causing prolonged suffering before death.