Provincial authorities in Limburg have given local fauna management FBE permission to cull wild boars that have been attacking locals around the village of Bunde, but not everyone is convinced it will help.

Attacks by boars have been rising in the area since January. One man had to have 17 stitches following an attack, while a woman’s dog were hurt when she and her pet were pursued by “a giant boar”.

Another boar attacked a man and his dog in the local park so viciously that the pet had to be put to sleep.

The wood around the area has now been closed to the public, while signs have been put up in the village park and the local sports grounds.

“The habitat of the animals has been disturbed. We had snow in January and many more people took to the woods, and now many more people holiday at home instead of abroad,” Alfred Melissen of fauna management FBE told the NRC.

Wild boar populations are only tolerated in the Veluwe and National Park De Meinweg, near Roermond in Limburg.

“Outside of these areas we don’t want any wild boars because of the damage they do to crops and the risk of African swine fever,” Melissen said.

According to professor of community ecology and conservation Han Olff, the cull will not have the desired effect because wild boars reproduce faster when the population falls. “If they are not culled they will die from lack of food or the wolves will eat them. And if they go hungry, the wolves will turn to something else, like sheep, for instance,” Olff warned.

Melissen said that previously in Limburg, boars would have laid waste to numerous crops.

Provincial authorities say the woods around Bunde will not be reopened until the situation has been made safe for people.