Boars flee as cull plan splits public opinion

Three wild boars spotted at Cyberport escaped death as they fled before vets arrived, two days after authorities on Friday announced they will capture boars in urban areas for humane dispatch.

The plan has split public opinions, with people backing it saying they are concerned about being attacked.

However, more than 40,000 people have signed a petition for authorities to retract the decision.

The three wild boars, two 1.5 meters long and another that is one meter long, were spotted yesterday wandering around in bushes at 100 Cyberport Road.

Police arrived with shields as two officers used them to block the wild boars from jumping over the fence to pedestrian areas.

When veterinarians from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department arrived the boars had walked away uphill.

The AFCD announced its plan on Friday, saying the number of injuries caused by wild pigs has risen in recent years.

"In the past 10 years, there was only one injury case per year on average for the first seven years, but 10 injury cases per year on average in the past three years," an AFCD spokesman said.

The strategy has spurred five animal-rights groups and an online media named Hong Kong Animal Post into starting a petition to demand the department revoke its decision.

More than 40,000 had signed the petition by yesterday, and Hong Kong Animal Post will submit the petition to the Food and Health Bureau and AFCD today.

The petition urged the AFCD to investigate what has caused the injury cases by wild pigs in the past few years before "convicting" wild boars with the new strategy.

Its petitioners pointed to the AFCD's having told lawmakers in 2017 that wild boars would not attack humans unless they were frightened or provoked.

Three days before the AFCD announced its humane dispatch measure, a wild boar that was on the run from AFCD staff had knocked down an auxiliary policeman and bit him in his right calf in North Point.

A 34-second recording from a car camera shows that the wild boar had chased after the 52-year-old male police and attempted to bite him. The officer fell down multiple times when running away.

A woman, Chan, who lives in Ma On Shan said she did not think that euthanizing wild boars was necessary unless they attacked humans.

Another woman, Lee, said her feelings toward the AFCD's measure were divided because she would feel scared when seeing wild boars and be worried that her children would be attacked. However, she said, killing wild boars was cruel.