The provincial governments should open the hunting season on deer, wild boar and geese to reduce the damage being caused to property and risk of accidents, farm minister Gerda Verburg said on Tuesday.

Verburg was speaking at a meeting of dairy farmers, Nos tv reports.
The minister said local councils pay too much attention to protecting boar in the Veluwe heathland region and deer in the dunes west of Amsterdam. Instead they should be looking at ways of limiting animal numbers, the minister said.

Traffic
Verburg has already written to Amsterdam city council which runs the Kennemer dune region, saying it must reduce the number of deer because there are now so many they form a danger to traffic.
Last year Noord-Holland province also urged Amsterdam to shoot some of the 1,000 deer roaming the dune area between the seaside resorts of Zandvoort and Noordwijk.
The national park is used as a water catchment area for the capital and is home to a large population of fallow and roe deer.

Boar
The Veluwe heathland region is also home to 6,000 wild boar but some experts say the area can only safely manage 800. For the past two years, hunters have shot 5,000 boar each hunting season without having a permanent affect on numbers.
Geese are also considered a nuisance in many parts of the country. In February Friesland provincial council gave the green light to the cull some 10,000 Greylag geese which, it says, are causing serious damage to crops.