Shakira’s lips don’t lie: Barcelona really does have a wild boar problem

After the high-profile case involving the singer, Barcelona is trying to get to grips with its wild boar problem, reports Graham Keeley in Spain

Boars are increasingly a problem in Spain (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Best known for bringing us hit songs like Waka Waka, Shakira also captured world attention when she became another victim of a growing hazard of urban life: marauding wild boars.

When two hogs made off with her handbag while she was out for a walk in a Barcelona park with her eight-year-old son, she took to Instagram to reassure her fans around the world she had survived the ordeal.

In a city infamous for human bag snatchers, these porcine thieves’ attack on the Colombian singer in September made her easily the highest profile victim of increasingly aggressive wild boars who have invaded the Catalan capital in recent years.

To counter these troublesome animals, scientists from Britain, Spain and the US started the world’s first contraceptive campaign against “problematic wildlife” in a city centre.

In an operation, involving the UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), the National Wildlife Health Centre (NWHC) in America and Spanish experts, some 192 boars were trapped and jabbed.

Scientists hope this will render the female boars permanently infertile while male boars need an annual vaccination to halt their sex drive.

The vaccinated boars are just a fraction of the estimated entire hog population in Catalonia but it is a start, says Manel Lopez Bejar, an expert in animal fertility at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who led the programme.

“There is no doubt that these boars cause a major problem. They destroy gardens, bother people, steal food which is left out and cause car crashes. They also bother farmers by damaging their land and crops,” Professor Lopez Bejar told The Independent.

“Contraception is just one of the tools to bring this population under control.”

He stressed neutering rampant wild boars’ would not stop more attacks by the hungry animals foraging for food in the city.

Hunts and changes in human behaviour were just as important, he said.

The €90,000 (£76,000) project will continue until 2025 to try to reign in the hogs.

A trial contraception programme was carried out on wild boars in Britain but in the UK the animals are not deemed “problematic wildlife”.

Barcelona is not the only city to suffer from an invasion by sus scrofa. However, residents of Barcelona have come under attack from boars because the city is densely populated and lies next to Parc Collserola, one of the largest urban parks in the world.

With an area of 84.65 square kilometres, it is eight times larger than the Bois de Boulogne in Paris and 22 times bigger than New York’s Central Park.

This provides a natural habitat for about 1,500 hogs who run wild there.

The war against the boar has recently turned political in Spain as a rising animal rights movement opposes the culls of the animals.

In 2019, some 750 animals were shot by hunters in the Parc Collserola, but more than 30,000 were killed across the northeastern region.

Aida Gascon Bosch, of AnimaNaturalis, a campaign group, said: “It does not make sense to hunt down wild boars when there are farms which breed these animals.

“The problem is created by hunters who cause the animals to move into cities to escape being hunted. Then humans start feeding them there and they come back for more food.”

Hunting organisations have disputed this, claiming that they are carrying a service to try to stop wild boars overrunning the city.

Carles Conejero, of the Wildlife Ecopathology Service from the Autonomous Barcelona university who works with the city council, said putting wild boars on the pill had not worked.

“It is impossible to vaccinate all the boars so we can never bring this population under control completely,” he said.

“Hunting is one of the only methods that we have at the present to control boar populations but even that is not ideal. It would be better if we could kill only young females but the reality is different. Hunting is something people do for fun and these hunters are not always professional.”

Reflecting on Shakira’s fate at the hands of two boars, Mr Conejero said human behaviour was probably to blame for the star’s close shave with the hogs’ tusks.

“Before that incident with Shakira someone must have been putting food out for the boars thinking they were cute. So then they started to expect food from humans,” he said.

“When they are hungry they get angry.”