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Today’s story is illustrated by Jan Siimson’s video from the feeding ground familiar to us all.

 

Three wild boars have been fitted with collars with GPS devices that will work for one and a half year in the research project of the Keskkonnateabe Keskus, Estonian Environmental Information Centre. The sows were caught in the Kilingi-Nõmme hunting area with the aid of an anaesthetizing gun. The researchers chart the movements of the boars to study the impact of supplementary feeding in winter on the boars’ choice of habitat and their movements. One or two more sows will be fitted with the GPS devices to avoid chance deviations in the data. The project is international: the GPS in the collar registers the location of the boar every two hours and the compressed data go by the GPS net to the data centre in Sweden. From there information is returned by e-mail to the scientists in Estonia.

 

In spring the researchers hope to see if the decrease in the number of ground-nesting game birds has been caused by nest robbing by boars. Artificial nests will be set out and trail (or scouting) cameras placed nearby; the records from the camera will show if the robbers are wild boars, raccoon dogs, foxes or raptor birds.