“I saw him pass 20 meters away. He was right behind the truck, I couldn’t shoot!”, exasperates Christine. The hunter has been waiting for more than three hours, quietly installed in her location in the Corbière forest, in Ille-et-Vilaine. This Tuesday, October 16, the young retiree is participating in one of the seven annual hunts authorized in the massif by the departmental council. For the moment, the animals escape him. “They don’t want me to use my new rifle!” she says impatiently to five of her comrades.
Accompanied by around thirty other hunters, the small group methodically tracks wild boars scattered in the undergrowth. Grumbling against the drizzle, Christine remains motionless, ready to shoot. Others, flanked by their dogs and their walkie-talkies, roam the forest. Dogs barking echoes in the distance, and the walkie-talkie crackles. Silence falls. “They saw one, it’s heading back towards the tail of the pond!”, exclaims Patrick. Immediately, everyone leaves in their car to grab the animal.
800,000 wild boars killed
That day, the hunters will kill two wild boars, the first weighing 68 kilos, the second weighing 38. Modest spoils, compared to the record of another hunt in the department, carried out four days earlier. The previous Saturday, further north, a 180 kilo wild boar was shot. An enormous beast, testimony to their insolent health in the area. In Ille-et-Vilaine, 5,800 wild boars were killed during the last season, compared to around 2,000 ten years ago. In France, around 35,000 individuals were slaughtered at the beginning of the 1970s. This figure has multiplied by 23 in fifty years, hovering around 800,000 animals killed in the 2022-2023 season.
But the proliferation of these animals still poses a problem, particularly among farmers. In Ille-et-Vilaine, the amount of damage caused by wild boars amounted to 500,000 euros during the last season, compared to 150,000 euros ten years ago. The phenomenon also affects motorists at the national level: in 2009, there were 20 times more collisions with wild animals than in the 1980s – in half of the cases, it involved wild boars. The total cost of these accidents would amount to between 115 and 180 million euros, depending on the compensation calculated by the insurance companies. Incidents destined to multiply while, recently, the animals have even been seen in town.
Advancement of the forest
“Wild boars are intelligent beasts, more difficult to hunt than they seem. You have to be patient,” philosopher André Douard, president of the department’s Hunting Federation. With a quivering mustache and curling eyes, the 72-year-old man knows the ravines of the Corbière forest by heart. At the wheel of his small vehicle, this former insurer outlines the multiple reasons for reproduction that has gotten out of control. “The consolidation, first,” he explains. In the 1960s, the transformation of small farms into large agricultural operations led to the disappearance of small game. Hunters have organized themselves to encourage the multiplication of larger animals: roe deer, stags, and therefore wild boars. “It would be stupid to deny that there wasn’t a craze for this type of hunting,” admits André Douard. “When you kill a wild boar, it’s something other than small game. All of a sudden, you You are Tartarin, you are Napoleon!”
By taking care not to take females to ensure the reproduction of the species, the hunters went beyond their objectives. “Man has also been overtaken by climate change,” continues the hunter. “The milder winters have favored the survival of small wild boars.” Added to these favorable breeding conditions is an ideal living environment. “With the abandonment of agriculture [NDLR : l’abandon des terres]France regains the forest cover it had at the beginning of the Middle Ages”, points out Raphaël Mathevet, researcher at the CNRS and co-author of Wild boars. Geographies of a political animal. These mammals have found shelters there to hide from humans, when they do not hide in crops.
Risk of bankruptcy
With their land on the edge of the Corbière forest, Joël and Bertrand Lejas experience the damage first-hand. “You don’t see the damage from the road, because the animals spend time hidden in the middle of the corn. But you only need to set foot in a field to notice it,” explains Bertrand Lejas. The breeder takes in the latest destruction: dozens of ears, lying against the ground, in multiple places in his field. You might think a mini-tornado passed by. “Yesterday, I spent my afternoon going around the plots to make sure there weren’t any in the fields,” he sighs. “So much time wasted on working.”
The two men have an advantage over other breeders: as hunters, they can, to a certain extent, contribute to the decline of the species. But this is not the case for the majority. “Since the 1960s, farmers no longer have the right to hide, which allowed them to shoot the animal in the event of damage to crops,” explains Raphaël Mathevet. As part of an agreement with the State, hunters have since paid compensation intended to reimburse operators. But as wild boars increase, so do the amount of compensation. Last year, the Ille-et-Vilaine federation paid 800,000 euros to reimburse farmers, including management costs. These costs are accompanied by a reduction in the number of hunting license holders, falling below one million practitioners in France. “Within two or three years, federations will end up in bankruptcy,” assures André Douard.
At the head of an organic farming operation and coming from a family of hunters, Françoise Louapre, the mayor of Laillé, knows this world well. She became a specialist after this town of 5,100 inhabitants south of Rennes attracted the attention of the national media following a hunting accident. On October 30, 2021, a motorist traveling on the main road was killed by a gunshot while a big game hunt was taking place near the four-lane road. The municipal council has written an open letter to request increased security for hunting. Above all, the town hall issued an order prohibiting hunting within 150 meters of houses, as well as the use of rifles in the town. “But the hunters simply stopped hunting nearby,” recalls Françoise Louapre. The mayor was then confronted with a contradictory demand. The need for security of residents, wanting to walk and live without risking a hunting accident, and that of regulating the wild boar population: “Faced with the farmers’ panic, we ended up canceling the decree a month later. “
To remedy the proliferation, the State has favored the extension of hunting periods. In certain departments, prefects regularly organize administrative raids. “But hunting is a leisure activity. Its practitioners do not consider themselves to be a public service. And they are not,” points out Françoise Louapre. Alternatives, such as trapping or even sterilization, are being considered. But they are not massive. The reintroduction of the wolf, a predator hitherto absent from the territory and a protected species, suggests a possible reduction in wild boars. “But if the wolf attacks wild boars, it also attacks farms,” points out Jean-Noël Ballot, vice-president of the Bretagne Vivante association. The cure may turn out to be worse than the disease.
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