18 cases of African swine fever have now been confirmed in Sweden. Dozens of hunters rake the terrain every day. Restrictions for local residents are known for at least one year, maybe two.
In the morning, fifty hunters have gathered in the center of Fagersta. Some are being trained to search for sick wild boars now, some have been walking in the forest since last Thursday and found carcasses of sick animals.
Kimmo Kesti has participated in the search and found two wild boar carcasses.
– Some of the sick animals died a few days ago, some have been dead for weeks. The smell is pretty horrible, Kesti describes the conditions.
Hunters travel in pairs. I took care of my son-in-law, who lives in Gothenburg Magnus Roosin according to the rule of thumb, wild boars thrive where people don’t, i.e. in thickets and dense forests. Now it would seem that the sick wild boars go to the water to cool off, apparently because of a high fever.
18 cases of swine fever have already been confirmed and the number is increasing day by day.
On Thursday evening, an information attack aimed at the locals filled the Norberg theater in the neighboring municipality of Fagersta. Now, official restrictions allow only specially trained hunters to move in the forest.
– The restrictions change my life a lot. I can’t go to the berry or mushroom in my usual places. I also have to think about how I move. I can’t go out with the dog like I used to, and I can’t let him out, Martin Winqvist list.
The area delimited due to swine fever is 1,000 square kilometers, or one hundred thousand hectares.
The restrictions also affect many businesses. For example, all the pigs in the area are put in a slaughter truck, so that the disease does not spread to production pigs and spoil Sweden’s reputation as a meat exporter. The forest machines are also standing still, and grain may not be moved from the farms.
In the Norberg theater, the disease and its progress in Sweden were being investigated by, among others, the Swedish head of veterinary medicine Erika Chenaiswho himself has just argued about the African swine fever.
Chenais referred to the actions of both Belgium and the Czech Republic to suppress the disease. Three phases can be distinguished in them. In the first phase currently underway in Sweden, the aim is to keep the wild boar population as peaceful as possible and to map the spread of the disease. That’s why searches in Fagersta are also focused on the area of the disease cases that have now been found.
Once the core area is determined, a wide perimeter is drawn around it, from which all the wild boars are shot, so that they do not wander into the core area and get sick.
In the third phase, it is estimated that all cases of the disease have been eliminated, but the restrictions are continued to be sure.
In the Belgian example, the disease subsided in a couple of years.
– It will take at least a year, probably two, before Sweden can be declared disease-free. Hopefully, the restrictions will not be valid for so long and in the entire region, Chenais estimates.
Read more:
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Hunters tracking swine fever have found more dead wild boars in Sweden – “There will be tens or hundreds”