Recently on my way home from dinner I ran into a common indigenous, nighttime resident of Islamabad – quite literally. As both cars, mine and the parallel car on the poorly lit thoroughfare, hit the extremely large and bewildered wild boar which had wandered unceremoniously onto the main road, we each come to abrupt, stunned stops.
With mud and blood splattered all over the windshield I got out in shock only to witness the impossible: the maimed animal staggered unsteadily to its feet and ran back out into the scrub-land to count its bacon. It was a moment in which the silence can only be broken by crying or laughing. The three mammals left standing (two anxious looking men had also emerged from the other car) choose to burst out in nervous laughter. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the last thing to be laughed at that night.
After an initial damage assessment on the cars, which was mostly cosmetic, I asked (completely unaware of the absurdity of my question) if we should call a vet. They looked puzzled so I persisted. He was a wild animal that just got hit by not one but two cars and had limped off into the forest. Gauging from the impact I felt and how he bounced when he subsequently hit their car, he probably had significant injuries and was in pain (they also attack when in pain so the next person he found on foot could be in considerable trouble). Someone could at least be called to put it out of its misery. What followed was heartiest laughter I had heard since Seinfeld ended. Finally, one of them stopped long enough to inform me that we would be wasting the vet’s and the government’s time for the sake of this “unclean pest” and that when it finally dies out there we will get ample “sawab” (spiritual rewards).
Concrete strategies on effective population control or culling (apart from the official "kill the dirty pigs" stance) are hard to come by
“Together we did a social service today” the other piped in. “The government approves, they even give back the cost of the bullet to a hunter if he kills a boar!” (at that point I was horrified but still couldn’t help but wonder if the government would also get our cars cleaned and fixed because it probably died eventually. I decided to keep that particular gem to myself). After laughing at my dismayed expression one last time, the city’s not-so-silent-boar-killing protectors of the night were gone, leaving me pondering on the complicated nature of the ridiculous situation.
Growing up here I recall that wild boars were always a backdrop problem. I recall it being something adults often cited as an explanation for the dangers of being out at night. It has apparently only gotten worse since then. This is because Islamabad and its surrounding areas have been the natural habitat of these boars long before we decided to move our capital here. With no surveys available, only an estimate of 800,000 has been reported (the latest number is from 2012). To put that in perspective Islamabad has a population of two million people. At night, they emerge from the surrounding brush and roam around freely, feasting on the tons of improperly disposed garbage in the city.
There is little doubt that they are dangerous. They are large (can reach up to 220 pounds), armed with sharp teeth and large tusks on males and travel in sizable packs. Apart from causing accidents and charging, at times there are also reports of them biting people. And the ones like our friend who had just wandered off into the night are even more dangerous as apparently, they will charge when angry, afraid or injured. I’m sure this one was all three. Basically, not to put too fine a point on it, these are not quite the little cousins of ‘Babe’ from the children’s movie!
But does that warrant the inhumane way in which we would prefer to treat some of the indigenous inhabitants of this scrub-land that we took over in the 1960s? (I can hear the avengers from that night laughing again as I write this). How can we protect our citizens and deal with this fast escalating problem without turning into monsters?
Wild boars have been running amok in the Capital, feeding on trash
The authorities’ various stances
Before someone ultra-religious drops off 10 injured wild boars on my front yard, let me make myself clear. I am not a fan of wild boars. I am not a fan of whiplash. I am not a fan of the two days wasted fixing the damage caused by their poor traffic etiquette. And, I am certainly not a fan of the infected leg that I later acquired from getting bit by something when getting out to see if there was something we could do to help whatever poor creature we had hit (at least that is what I assumed the two gentlemen had also gotten out for, misguidedly). I do believe, however, that killing a living thing (indigenous or not) or inhumanely or leaving it to die just because it is inconvenient to our arbitrary settlements is inhuman.
Despite residents being extremely concerned about the issue, concrete strategies on effective population control or culling (apart from the official “kill the dirty pigs” stance) are hard to come by. Try as I might, for example, the rather hilarious “CDA bullet reimbursement policy” which I heard of that night is nowhere to be found. But, it was reported that in the 1980s the government of Punjab did pay villagers for each tail they delivered – and a shortage of funds apparently put an end to that!
One of the measures employed by the local authorities was using poison mixed with animal feed. However, this has been only sporadically applied as it posed a threat to other animals and livestock.
The issuing of free hunting permits was also included in the measures. However professional hunting parties faced plenty of deterrents including the red-tape related hassle of procuring these licenses with both the police and city authorities. Additionally, the license only allows for the use of a shotgun. I’m quite surprised that the CDA wasn’t mobbed by people clamouring for these licenses as, in my rudimentary knowledge of firearms, the limited range could be an extremely thrilling way to anger a 200-pound boar and not exactly kill it. Additionally, the worsening security issues in the capital mean that this is no longer an option.
Alternatives?
The most obvious thing to be done is better disposal of residential and domestic trash by local development authorities, as that is what is attracting boars to the center of town. According to the CDA around 600 tons of solid waste are produced in Islamabad daily, which, in the absence of proper recycling centers, permanent landfills or incinerators ends up improperly dumped in residential areas. Wild boars although naturally equipped to smell and dig for food in the wild, are simply flocking to the open garbage and their population is surging. Still we refuse to acknowledge that proper garbage management is a critical problem in the city. We residents are literally living in our own filth – a little too close to the alleged habits of the creature we love to hate.
According some to experts, clearing the natural cover near the city where they emerge from at night –disturbing as it is that we already have a garbage problem and people now want to cut trees and natural growth too – is a better option than poisoning or killing them. These measures along with better waste disposal could result in reducing the boar population within the core of the city.
Green or environmentally friendly pest control has also often involved introducing a natural predator into the eco-system. Since their natural predator is the leopard (which one wouldn’t/shouldn’t let loose all over the city), the second-best choice is humans. After all, ironically, the dinner I was getting home from that night included a foreign couple that had spent an hour detailing their longing for the meat of this particular animal). Some camps feel that the population of wild boars has soared in Islamabad because of legally prohibiting the Christian population from consuming the meat. Even the foreign hunting teams coming here were under contract to not cook or consume the meat.
Some suggestions from the ‘civilised’ world abroad
In the end the civilised population, never to be left behind on development discourse in a Muslim country, as usual has the most creative solutions to this problem. The following gems were retrieved from a foreign online forum:
“Since they’ve ALL got guns and knives, they could just spray and pray like they normally do and pick up the carcasses the next morning.”
(Perhaps he thinks we can institute a boar-per-person law. “You didn’t kill your boar quota this week… 10 lashes for you”)
“Can’t they trade pigs for Indian bulls and cows?”
(Pakistan Institute of Trade and Development- Are you listening?)
“Western civilisation is at war with a culture that is terrified of pork yet we fail to capitalise on their fear.”
(My simple Eastern mind is trying hard to grap this one. Does this mean that the next generation of drones is going to be dropping dead pigs on civilians now?)
