The jabalí is an intelligent animal, with a great capacity for reproduction and adaptation and equipped with a matriarchal structure expert in survival strategies. The abundance of food in forests and fields, and now also in containers in populated areas, has turned overpopulation in Catalonia and throughout Europe into a problem that the recent outbreak of swine fever has not discovered. Experts and hunters speak of a community of 190,000 to more than 220,000 eggs in Catalonia alone, of which 120,000 are according to a recent estimate from the Ministry of Agriculture. There were many plans to try to control the situation, but so far the fight against the jabali has failed.
The only factor that allowed a forced reduction of the cabin was the continuation, in the Administrative Plans. Due to food scarcity, the wild boar population is reduced by between 30% and 50% over the period 2022-2023. In 2024, it began to increase by 11% and will continue to do so, as rain brings with it food. With the arrival of African swine fever, this ungulate was now in sight and the government announced that around 60,000 specimens would be culled. For some, the key is hunting, but for the majority of experts, what is missing is a comprehensive strategy for managing and restricting these animals’ access to food.
The jabalí has learned to look for food anywhere, both in a rural environment, which, despite its carelessness, presents greater vegetation cover and greater hunger, than in the fields. Also in inhabited areas: in trash cans, by attacking cat feeders or fed by citizens who circumvent the ban. Rising temperatures due to climate change also favor the survival of offspring. In addition, the absence of natural predators and the reduction in hunting pressure complete an ideal code which reinforces population density. In Spain, in 2000, 118,885 jabalíes were slaughtered and in 2022-2023 there were 450,150.
There are no simple measures to resolve this serious conflict. “The problem is linked to human activity. The fields were abandoned decades ago and the growth of forests led to food and shelter,” explains Jordi Serra-Cobo, biologist and epidemiologist at the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) at the University of Barcelona. Y añade: “In urban areas, they have learned to throw away containers and have become accustomed to eating basil. This helps increase the population.” Serra-Cobo pleads for “the involvement of administrations, which must be mobilized, of the cazadores and of a responsible city”. “We must restrict access to food, both to regulate the population and from an epidemiological point of view. Everyone must be involved,” he says. For Ignasi de Dalmases, who led the Rural Agents of Girona for several decades, a drastic reduction in density “is a utopia, because thousands of kilometers of urbanization across the territory are filled with reservoirs where there is refuge, food, water and security, and from there they disperse”.
According to the Jabalí monitoring program in Catalonia, which has financed the Generalitat and Diputación de Barcelona since 1998, the densities recorded during the period 2024-25 oscillate between new and 15 individuals per square kilometer in the observatories of the northeast, Alt Empordà or Montseny, and all three of the Sierra del Cadí. According to these data, at the beginning of 2025 in Catalonia there were some 190,000 wild boars recorded, but with the arrival of spring and the birth of the young – between the fever and the month of May – this figure increased by more than 200,000.
The Government, during the swine fever crisis, estimated a population of between 125,000 and 180,000 eggs, and announced that it would eliminate around 60,000 to reduce overpopulation. According to the hunters, during the 2022-2023 season they killed some 72,000, and last year, almost 80,000. Joaquín Zarzoso, president of the Catalan Federation of Caza, highlights the “involvement” of the collective: “We know the territory and its fauna and we fulfill a function that contributes to the sustainable management of species and the rural environment.”
Over the last 50 years, all of Spain has seen a sharp increase in the species, with accelerated annual growth. It is estimated that there are between 2 and 2.2 million wild boars depending on the season. According to the president of the Real Federación Española de Caza, Josep Escandell, “for experts, taking into account the prolificacy of the female, it would be necessary to extract 66% of the jabalí population, or 1,400,000 eggs per year, out of three, from the ground to stabilize the population”. “This proportion, as the study maintains, is impossible to cover with hunting in the current regime and with the hunters that there are, so the density increases. With incentives and technical and personal means, it would be better,” he says. The densest areas are in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula and in Huesca, Valencia, Murcia, Galicia, Castile and León and Navarre. Globally, population growth is around 10% per year.
Descent of hunters
The trend, both in Spain and in Europe – with the exception of Germany and Belgium – is towards a decline in the number of hunters. In 2008, there were more than 100,000 and today, according to the Catalan Federation of Caza (FCC), they no longer reach 40,000. The Generalitat has some 56,000 active licensees. The average age is 60 years old, but a large number of hunters are retired, around 400 are over 86 years old – even if they have a license, not all of them cazan – and do not reach 10,000 children under 35 years old. There is no generational relevance.
Road accidents are also an indicator of overpopulation. According to a study aimed at identifying areas of concentration of accidents with ungulates in the Territory Department, accidents with animals in Catalonia show a sharp increase: from 3,607 in 2019 to 5,349 in 2023, with 23,092 accidents over this period. In 79% of them, wild boar is the cause, causing 3,649 accidents per year. The Rural Agents of Girona analyze all the accidents in which forest fires occur and compare them with the accidents recorded by the Mossos d’Esquadra de Tráfico. “We found that in around 30 to 40 percent of cases, accidents were not reported,” says De Dalmases.
Concerning the pilot project for a sterilizing vaccine – which consists of capturing each animal, vaccinating it for a year and returning it after a certain time – the hunters and experts consulted considered it “absurd”. In addition to the difficulty of its application, according to hunters “there are studies which estimate that for a significant reduction it would be necessary to sterilize between 70% and 80% of women”. We remember that in three years, since the vaccine was sold to several local administrations, 220 animals have been inoculated. Vaccinating triple that would cost more than a million euros.
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