The Chamber of Abrantes (Santarém) intends to see wild boar slaughter actions carried out in urban areas, with the mayor of the municipality expressing his concern with the growing number of sightings and animals circulating in the city.

"This is a matter that worries us and that is not new, with sightings in the urban areas of the municipality for more than a decade, but in the last four to five years, reports of sightings of wild boar in the region have been increasingly frequent in the centre of the city" of Abrantes, the mayor of the municipality told Lusa, having indicated the fear of "possible attacks by animals, if they feel threatened", in addition to "endangering road safety".

While noting "there are no records of attacks" by wild boars on people in Abrantes, Manuel Jorge Valamatos (PS) defended, however, the need to create a "strategy" and a "legal framework" capable of "mitigating the excessive presence of animals of this species" within the city.

"Licenses have been issued by the ICNF [Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests] for occasional wild boar slaughter in hunting areas and, there, there has been interventions by hunter associations", he observed, noting, however, that "Licenses are not issued to shoot inside cities".

Anpromis - National Association of Corn and Sorghum Producers has also expressed its opinion, having indicated, in a report presented in July, that the damage caused by wild boar in the corn crop reached, last year, eight million euros.

According to the entity, the "uncontrolled increase in the wild boar population that has been seen in recent years in our country is causing massive and increasing damage to the national agricultural sector", with Anpromis concluding that "the damage caused by wild boars in the corn fields of its associates represented, in 2022, an extremely high value, around 8.0 million euros".