Wild boar overpopulation, in a striking video

In these images, captured by a camera trap, it is practically impossible to count the number of young accompanying the female wild boars that make up this sounder. They come to an artificial water point where they quench their thirst at a time, summer, when natural resources disappear from many places they were used to visiting. This wildlife control point allows us to witness the wild boar’s high breeding capacity.

Unlike other ungulates, whose productivity is limited by resource availability and relatively late sexual maturity, the wild boar has extraordinary ecological and reproductive plasticity. It is capable of positively modifying the age of first reproduction, the number of young per litter and even the proportion of breeding females according to environmental conditions.

Various scientific studies conclude that populations can grow by between 100 and 200% annually when especially favourable conditions coincide and mortality is low (Massei et al., 2015; Bieber and Ruf, 2005).

This turns these animals into pests wherever early sexual maturity, their short 115-day gestation, the large size of the litters, with an average of 4-5 piglets but with documented births of up to 13 young, high juvenile survival and their enormous adaptation to the favourable conditions of the environment in which they live, such as the availability of food and water, all come together. The main food resources of wild boars in natural environments consist of acorns, beechnuts, chestnuts, maize, cereals, a wide range of crops, livestock remains and, increasingly commonly, urban rubbish.

In this regard, there are studies that link so-called “mast years”, or years of massive fruiting of oaks and beeches, with significant increases in fertility, explaining this through an increase in breeding females, larger litters and more successful survival of the piglets.