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 We will publish the Round Table discussion about the Animal of the Year as a serial. Participants at the discussion: executive director of the Estonian Hunters’ Society Tõnis Korts, deputy executive director Andres Lillemäe, hunter and organiser of nature trips Vahur Sepp, zoologist and wild boar behavioural investigator Ragne Oja, Looduskalender editor Gennadi Skromnov and editors of journal Loodusesõber Helen Arusoo and Mats Kangur.

 

The problem of extra feeding.

The disease spreads all over Estonia and the whole country is declared as a special zone: so it can turn out if nothing is done about the unrealistic demands on hunters that have been presented. Because how to comply with the obligation to hunt 29 000 boars in one season without winter feeding? Hoping at the same time that the boars will not move around more widely in search of food?

 

Gennadi Skromnov:  What will we do with the instruction to shoot 29 000 boars?  At this point I fear for the hunters: it is so easy to say later that the hunters couldn’t cope (the note from the Ministry of the Environment sent to journalists on Sept 15th is at the end of this text).

 

Andres Lillemäe: And it is being said already.

 

Gennadi: Let us see with what hunting strategies and how the task is expected to be done.

 

Helen Arusoo: The directive says: In Estonia feeding of boars is prohibited from October 1st to April 30th; only a small amount of bait feed is allowed.

 

Andres Lillemäe: I was at this meeting at the Ministry of Agriculture where the solution with prohibition of extra feeding was introduced; it has been recommended by many European sources after all. There I expressed my opinion that reducing extra feeding is no doubt very effective for decreasing the number of boars in a cold winter when we have 25-30 degrees below zero and the cold empties the forest. A couple of winters ago there was very much snow and when a large boar managed to get at the extra food the herd moved in after him; if not, piglets were left where they were. With the current handling we should leave the piglets to die of starvation? Is that humane? On the other hand, as long as we have a warm winter, prohibition of extra feeding is not a working solution.  Boars will find their own food, attacking grasslands and the winter cornfields of farmers: the boar herd will turn cornfields and forest upside down. Discontinuing extra feeding will put pressure on the rest of nature. I said this outright at the conference but evidently it did not reach its goal since the next step was  a directive prohibiting additional winter feeding.

 

Helen Arusoo: I will tell what I heard from Latvian hunter Linda Dombrovska who attended the EC conference on ASF in Parma, Italy, where prohibition of extra feeding in ASF areas was discussed. At the conference it was stated that a prohibition does not necessarily produce the desired result – because lack of food sets the boars moving. As a solution it would work only in 3-4 years. 

 

Mats Kangur:  Ragne, as a researcher can you tell us if this limited bait food, 10 kilos in 24 hours, will keep the boars stationary?

 

Ragne Oja:  When the herd gets at the 10 kilos of food it will be gone in two minutes and they will go on to the next place. The bellies of boars that I have dissected in spring have been very large. The biggest belly – food only – weighed 8 kilos. It was from a quite old boar that had gorged itself to the limit. Boars eat a lot.

 

Andres Lillemäe: Guess how close to the feeding place I have seen a boar sleeping? 20 meters! It slept practically in the food. If a boar has no food it goes in search of it and so there will be a larger area of movement and the disease can spread easier.

 

Vahur Sepp: Food amounts should not be prescribed in any directive; the hunter should be able to decide himself how much is needed. One rule is that food should be available for boars all the time, and the feeding place should be visited as seldom as possible. A boar shies off from 12 hours old tracks. If food is brought in the afternoon a boar will not easily go there that night.

 

Ragne Oja:  Feeding in winter is now banned, allowed in summer – but what actually increases the boar population? Reproduction takes place in November-December and so that the piglets too will be able to breed they fatten up now. By autumn they are about 25-30 kilos, heavy enough to reproduce. Nowhere else in Europe there are such brautiful fat piglets as here in Estonia. They are fat. The southern European ones are actually ugly beside them. The breeding this year will be massive, quite as last year. If moreover the winter will be warm the boars will not die but will stray around a lot. By the way, snow cover alone will not prevent boars getting hold of food, but freezing of the ground does. And probably the boars go checking for food where they were fed earlier all their life, meaning that they move around  much. They have a good memory. That is, the winter feeding must remain, to make hunting possible.

 

Vahur Sepp: Talking about extra feeding I would say that call the place where they are fed a hunting area; others are simply feeding places. The latter sites should be abolished in the future. But at the hunting tower the hunter himself must be able to decide how much food is needed.

 

Andres Lillemäe:  Point one – it must be stated that winter feeding shall not be prohibited.

 

Vahur Sepp: We also have boar herds in Estonia that manage in winter without human aid. When I am out on the springtime grouse display inventories in the forest for several weeks, I recognize such a boar from its droppings. Those who have not had food from humans has droppings reminding of those of a horse, consisting of reed roots, spruce needles and thoroughly chewed raspberry vanes.

 

Tõnis Korts: In the examples from Latvia and Lithuania it can be clearly seen that although boar have been intensely hunted, the numbers are high as before. So that simply raising the hunting pressure does not make high numbers disappear. Selective shooting must be used which has already been quietly implemented. Otherwise the request to hunt 30 000 will be repeated annually.

 

Andres Lillemäe: actually only hunting the young animals would help. The large ones should be left and the herd behind them wiped out, that is simple arithmetic. If there are 4 young sows in the herd, and each bears 4 piglets that will be 20 boars. If only one sow remains it bears only 8 piglets, altogether 9 boars remaining.

 

Ragne Oja: One problem is that nobody actually knows how many boar live in the forests. we may suppose that they are 30 000 before the breeding season but they may also be 60 000. The difference may be in this order.

 

Gennadi: if we look at the calendar do we have a realistic hunting volume?

 

Tõnis Korts: 25 000 boar were shot last season and we managed, although some of the hunting associations were at the limit of their capacity. But today the problem is that a goal is set up without a working chain of other activities. The path that leads to the goal is inadequate. Take for instance the present obligation to send a a sample for analysis to the laboratory, waiting to know how the boar can be used – these are very important modificatiaons, new bottlenecks in the process. A ministry official  said that he returned his boar permit to the association – because he also goes to work and can no longer manage boar hunting in the new circumstances. I have the same problem: if I now would go out hunting on the weekend, then the sample results from a boar shot on Friday are not back until on Wednesday because it is sent away only on Monday. Because of that summer hunting has been hampered, people simply won’t go hunting.

 

Helen Arusoo: This is all real time that must be spent on hunting compared to last year. 

Tõnis Korts: If we were to solve all these bottlenecks the shooting of 29 000 boar will be realistic but only in case there actually are boars. The disease areas are quite empty of boars in places. If we don’t solve the problems the fever may spread.

 

The series from the hunters’ round table continues.

 

Estonian Ministry of the Environment, 15.09.2015.

The Ministry’s proposal to amend the Hunting Act stemmed from the understanding that the measures to reduce the number of boars have not been effective  to date. In previous years the Environmental Board and the Estonian Environmental Agency as well as landowners have recommended that hunters reduce the number of wild boar significantly; regrettably it has not succeeded. The creation of additional measures should contribute to the attainment of the objective – the number of boars could be up to 1,5 boar per 1000 ha on average; today it is over 8.