Urban wild boar populations in European cities create human-wildlife conflict while the boar themselves face road mortality, poisoning, and retaliatory killing.
Urban wild boar occupy a welfare-conflict space that cities increasingly must navigate. The boar themselves are caught between two worlds — no longer wild enough to avoid humans, not protected enough to avoid lethal management. Road kills, poisoning attempts, and sudden lethal culling after conflict events cause welfare harms that are rarely counted alongside the human costs of boar presence. Urban boar management that prioritizes non-lethal prevention over reactive killing is both more ethical and often more effective at reducing human-boar conflict over time.