looduskalender.ee

This photo from Valgamaa was posted on 01.01.2015

 

The appalling view shows negligence in limiting the spread of ASF (African Swine Fever) despite the long holidays. In the hunters’ forum the topic has been discussed since the publication of the photo. Recently the abundance of boar in Estonian forests has been publicly discussed.

 

See photos and opinions of hunters in the hunters’ forum (in Estonian): LINK

 

In a nearly one month old news item from ERR (Estonian Public Broadcasting) we can read that sealable containers will be placed in the forests for ”plague victims”  and that in the next few weeks a mobile incinerator for destruction of the carcasses will arrive in Estonia: LINK

 

On the website of the Ministry of Agriculture on the issue  www.seakatk.ee  the latest entry, from October 16th 2014 concerning funds, confirms the ERR news: LINK

 

The Environment Board provides a summary of last year’s overview of the spread of ASF in Latvia which is commented in the web pages of the Estonian Hunters’ Association on Sunday, January 4th: LINK

 

As far as is known we have to do with a presently still incurable viral disease of boars and pigs in the world that spreads among wild boar by way of feces, body secretions and blood, and due to the current mating period the animals are active. Disease carriers are numerous; the infection is not contagious to themselves. Carcasses are rapidly found by alert ravens, on whose calls other corvids arrive, then birds of prey. After the birds in daytime foxes and other small and large carnivores in the area arrive with dusk. Pieces from the torn-up carcass are carried away by air as well as along the ground: thus the disease spreads in the forest. Humans carry the infection around mainly under boot soles: a visitor to a site or somebody who has accidentally stepped on faeces can unknowingly in a few hours be a disease carrier already some hundred kilometres away.

 

Looduskalender tries to avoid causing unnecessary panic but the situation has been prompted by worries from observing the actions of our farmers – until now pig farmers have carefully and with cause observed all essential safety measures. But the inactivity that the images from the forest display does not provide assurance of a sustained capacity to limit the spread of the ASF disease.

 

The reactions of the Viljandi hunters on the pre-Christmas situation can be read here: LINK (in Estonian)