Wild boar population control with dogs: the role of drones and thermal vision in the war against overpopulation

A thermal drone detects the body heat of animals, making it possible to locate them even in dense vegetation, fog or at night, conditions in which the human eye comes up against these limitations.

Location before the action

Before releasing the dogs, a reconnaissance flight makes it possible to know whether there are wild boar in the patch, how many there are and in which area they are concentrated. This avoids “blank” days and focuses the dogs’ efforts where there really are specimens to control. Let us look at a very clear example of all this.

Safety for dogs and people

One of the greatest risks of this method is that the dogs face a strong, bulky wild boar equipped with long tusks, especially those solitary males. Seeing the size and behaviour of the animal from the air before the release helps decide how many dogs to release and with what precautions, reducing the likelihood that any of those hounds will be injured.

Tracking during the action

Once the chase has begun, the drone can follow the movement of the group of dogs behind the wild boar, and do so from a distance, giving the hunter information about where the run is heading, something especially useful in areas of low scrubland, dense scrub or closed forest, where visual contact is lost in seconds.

Recovering dogs

After the encounter, locating dogs that have been left behind, exhausted or lagging somewhere in the hills is another of the applications most valued by pack handlers, and probably the one that saves the most dogs’ lives year after year.

Real-time animal welfare

This is perhaps the most sensitive and least known application outside the sector: the thermal camera allows the drone operator to observe the development of the hold live and detect whether a dog is injured at the very moment it happens, without waiting to physically reach the place, something that in rugged terrain or dense vegetation can take critical minutes.

Seeing from the air that a dog stops moving normally, separates from the group while limping or remains motionless makes it possible to immediately alert the team on the ground, prioritise veterinary assistance and, ultimately, reduce the time an injured animal spends without attention. It is a powerful argument when talking about animal welfare in this method, because it shifts the safety of the pack from something reactive (acting when the injured dog is discovered) to something proactive (knowing it at the instant it happens).

Population and health management

In a context of wild boar expansion and concern over African swine fever in southern Europe, surveying populations through thermal flights over maize fields and crops helps plan control actions with more objective criteria than the simple observation of damage.

The agricultural benefit

This directly connects population control with a problem that affects many people outside the hunting world: the wild boar is now one of the main causes of damage to maize fields, vineyards and other crops across large areas of Spain, and its population has grown steadily in recent decades. Thermal detection makes it possible to plan more precise control actions —and therefore more effective ones, reducing pressure on crops with fewer days in the field— and shifts the conversation from the purely hunting sphere to that of rural management.

As for the use of drones to locate game animals

In addition to regional hunting regulations, there are two additional regulatory frameworks worth mentioning:

Aviation regulations. Flying a drone in Spain is regulated by AESA under the European framework (EU Regulations 2019/947 and 2019/945). Since 2026, only the European standard scenarios STS-01 and STS-02 have been valid for specific-category operations, following the disappearance of the former national scenarios STS-ES.

This entails the mandatory use of drones with European class marking C5 or C6 depending on the scenario, and for many professional operators it has meant pilot requalifications and new operations manuals. Flying at night or over land where uninformed people are present carries additional requirements.

Privacy. Recording with a camera over neighbouring properties or public roads means respecting data-protection and privacy regulations, something that is not always taken into account in rural areas with nearby neighbours.

Tradition versus the cutting edge: two ways of understanding population control

We end with a reflection that goes beyond the technical or the legal: what is gained and what is lost when technology enters a field so closely linked to oral tradition and experience accumulated over generations.

Uncertainty as part of the passion for hunting. Traditional population control is based on reading the countryside: the fresh track, the wallow, the recent rooting, the wind and its direction, the time of day... The old-school hunter decides where to release the pack based on indirect signs and the accumulated memory of previous days in the field, without any real certainty that there is a wild boar in the patch until the dogs confirm it with their barking and runs.

That uncertainty, with its blank days and surprises, is also part of what many enthusiasts value in this activity: it is not just a result, it is an exercise in knowledge of the terrain built up over years spent walking the hills.

The thermal drone reverses that approach. Instead of inferring the animal’s presence from indirect signs, it confirms it directly before taking a single step: the heat of the wild boar’s body can be seen on the screen, along with its exact location and often even its approximate size. The decision ceases to rest on reading the terrain and instead rests on objective data.

It is more effective and safer, but it also shifts part of the weight of the day from the hunter’s eye and experience to the drone pilot’s screen. Do these devices become an aid that adds to the pack handler’s experience, or do they end up replacing the judgement that previously only practice could provide?