Wild boar populations have expanded dramatically across Europe and North America, creating human-wildlife conflicts that require welfare-conscious management approaches.
Wild boar caught in traps experience acute stress from confinement and contact with humans. Snared boar suffer from the injuries of the snare itself and from the distress of immobility. Even legal hunting causes suffering when shots are not immediately fatal - a wounded boar may run considerable distances before being recovered. The intelligence and social complexity of wild boar means that individuals experience the disruption of family groups when members are killed. Non-lethal management approaches that combine deterrents with targeted exclusion avoid these welfare harms while providing equivalent or better long-term results for crop protection.