Given its long tradition livestockGalicia has earned the title of ‘cow country’but there is an animal that is on the way to dethroning them: the wild boar. There are many in the community. very many. And that translates into damaged farmland and traffic accidents. The Xunta has decided to provide a solution by pressing a red button thought a priori as a resource “exceptional”although in recent years he has resorted to it half a dozen times: “the temporary hunting emergency”.
It sounds very bureaucratic, but it’s easy to understand. In practice, the Xunta has given the green light to the free hunting and no limit of the species in more than 250 municipalities.
What has happened? That Galicia wants to stand up to the thousands of wild boars that populate its fields and mountains. And it has decided to do so by bringing out the institutional ‘heavy artillery’, which translates into the declaration of the “temporary hunting emergency” in almost 40 regions spread throughout the region.
Medio Rural’s announcement has published today in the Official Gazette of Galicia (DOG) and in practice it means giving carte blanche to hunters so that they can shoot wild pigs without limit until February 2026 in more than 250 municipalities. There is no maximum number of animals that can be shot or captured.
What does the measurement say? Open the door to adoption “special control measures” to reduce the population of wild boars in 38 regions of Lugo, A Coruña, Pontevedra and Ourense, which covers a total 254 town councils. In all of them, hunters will be able to shoot or capture wild boars without limits or regardless of the sex of the prey, although the authorities ask that “adult and sub-adult” females be prioritized. Hunting calves and females with offspring is also allowed, although with prior authorization from the General Directorate of Natural Heritage.
What hunters should pay attention to is where they are: the DOG distinguishes between “hunting” and “non-hunting” lands. In the former, wild boar may be hunted every day of the week, although adjusting to certain guidelines established in the standard (in hunting-free areas, for example, hunts must have authorization); In the latter it will be necessary to have a permit.
Is it a new measure? To measurements. The declaration of “temporary hunting emergency” has just been be published today to come into force tomorrow, but it is not the first time that the Xunta uses this figure to control the populations of wild pigs in the community. The Department of the Environment has already used the same instrument in four other times: in 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2024.
In fact, this time it will affect fewer municipalities than last year. The Spanish remember that then the measure also came into force in october and extended until February, covering nearly 85% of the region. The Xunta ruled out extending a figure that has always been presented as “exceptional”, but it did maintain a protocol in spring that contemplated preventive raids.
Why do you hunt wild boars? In 2019 Jacobo Feijoo, forestry engineer at Unións Agrarias, published in Galician Field an article in which he tried to clarify how many wild pigs live in Galicia. His conclusion is that there could be at least 180,000. “In other words, taking as a reference the 26,000 square kilometers of agricultural and forestry areas of Galicia, we certainly have at least 6.90 wild boars per km2,” the expert added, adding that with that level of concentration we can now speak of “high densities.”
Coexistence between this high volume of animals, crop fields and traffic is not always easy. In the advertisement In which the Xunta declares the hunting emergency, it recognizes that “the effects caused by wild boar populations have been experiencing an increase in Galicia as a whole in recent years”, a phenomenon that the regional government relates “largely to changes in the use of the environment and the ecological characteristics of the species.”
“It has been confirmed that it causes multiple damages in agriculture and traffic accidents and its increasingly common presence in peri-urban areas is an additional problem,” insist the Galician Executive. “Likewise, a high population increases the risk of the spread of certain diseases, such as African swine fever, which would make their eradication difficult at any given time, if necessary.”
Does it have that much impact? In March The Voice of Galicia revealed that last year alone the Xunta dedicated more than 4.1 million euros to compensate farmers who had seen how their crops (both large farms and self-consumption orchards) were damaged by wild boars. It may seem like a lot of money, but according to Environment data, in one year (from August 2023 to July 2024) these large animals caused damage to 2,800 agricultural hectares.
The money invested in prevention is added to the compensation money, which brings the total bill to 4.6 million. The proliferation of wild boars is not only felt in the fields. It also affects roads, increasing the risk of accidents. Again according to The Voice of GaliciaIn 2024, more than 3,700 collisions were recorded.
Images | Iván PC (Flickr) and Leopoldo de Castro (Flickr)
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