Mesoscale survey of the distribution of wild boar rooting

Abstract

Wild boars (Sus scrofa) cause agricultural damage and are a reservoir of livestock diseases, such as classical swine fever. Monitoring their density is a basic management task, although appropriate methods have not been established. We surveyed the distribution of wild boar rooting in a 90 × 92 km area subdivided into 18 × 23 km areas. Approximately 10-km survey lines, passing through a mosaic of vegetation and topography, were placed in each area to record wild boar rooting, and the rooting density (rooting/km) was obtained. Camera traps were used to check the reliability of the rooting survey. The effect of the local environment was removed by statistical analysis to obtain density indices from the rooting and camera surveys. This showed that the rooting density was high in mountain areas where wild boars are expected to occur and low in fragmented forests surrounded by urban areas. The rooting density correlated with the camera measurements; however, density indices were not significant after removing local environmental effects, probably due to the small number of cameras used in this study.