Too many wild boar? Modelling fertility control and culling to reduce wild boar numbers in isolated populations

PLoS One. 2020 Sep 18;15(9):e0238429. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0238429. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Wild boar and feral swine number and range are increasing worldwide in parallel with their impact on biodiversity and human activities. The ecological and economic impact of this species include spread of diseases, vehicle collisions, damage to crops, amenities and infrastructures and reduction in plant and animal abundance and richness. As traditional methods such as culling have not contained the growth and spread of wild boar and feral pigs, alternative methods such as fertility control are now advocated. We used empirical data on two isolated wild boar populations to model and compare the effects of different regimes of culling and fertility control on population trends. We built a Bayesian population model and applied it to explore the implications for population control of various management options combining culling and/or contraception. The results showed that, whilst fertility control on its own was not sufficient to achieve the target reduction in wild boar number, adding fertility control to culling was more effective than culling alone. In particular, using contraceptives on 40% of the population to complement the culling of 60% of the animals, halved the time to achieve our target reduction compared with culling only. We conclude that, assuming the effort of adding fertility control to culling was found to be cost-effective in terms of population reduction, these two methods should be used simultaneously if a rapid decrease in wild boar number is required for a closed population.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animal Culling / methods
  • Animals
  • Animals, Wild
  • Bayes Theorem
  • Conservation of Natural Resources / methods*
  • Contraception / methods*
  • Population Control / methods*
  • Retrospective Studies
  • Sus scrofa
  • Swine

Grants and funding

The original data collection used to underpin this work was funded by the Segretariato Generale della Presidenza della Repubblica.