Better environment brings boar trouble

For villagers on Yanshan Mountain, 300 km from Beijing, ecological improvement has led to better growing conditions, cleaner spring water and fresher air, but wild animals have emerged as a new menace.

In Longhua County in the city of Chengde, Hebei Province, hordes of boars are often seen digging corn seeds for food on farmland during the spring, and eating corn and potatoes in the autumn, leaving villagers with scant harvests.

In one extreme case, male boars were found to have mated with domesticated pigs raised on the mountain, which later gave birth to a litter of more than a dozen hybrid piglets.

"The hybrid pigs had sharp mouths, and red and yellow fur with black and white strips. They are too restless to be kept in a pigsty," said Xiao Fan, a forestry engineer with the county's forestry bureau.

"I have seen a horde of around 20 boars wandering the mountain, with adults on the edge, and small piglets in the middle," Xiao recalled.

More than 100 boars are estimated to roam near several villages in Lanqi Township of Longhua County, where the wild pigs were rarely seen ten years ago, said Liu Ruichen, head of the township's agricultural service station.

Sixty-year-old Sun Wen from Laoyemiao Village of the township still remembers how a decade ago the hill was almost stripped bare from overgrazing by the more than 300,000 livestock raised in the county, and floodwater washed away much of the soil from the mountain on rainy days.

"The farmland and roads were severely damaged because of soil erosion, and vehicles were not able to leave our village," Sun recalled.

Starting 2002, the county banned herding on the mountain, and converted more than 1,200 mu (80 hectares) of farmland into forests as part of a national forestation campaign.

Thanks to the campaign, the barren soil on Yanshan Mountain has turned into grassland. However, this has led to an increasing number of wild animals, including boars, which have become the villagers' new headache.

To protect their crops, villagers set off fireworks and bang on iron basins to scare the boars away.

"We set off fireworks from 7 to 10 p.m. on the mountain, but the boars return later at night," said Xia Cai, another villager.

Harming wild boars is illegal, as they are included on the list of land animals under state protection.

Xia said he was once fined 300 yuan (49.23 U.S. dollars) for trapping a boar that was destroying his farm plot.

"My plot was located on a remote mountain, so my crops were damaged the most," he said, complaining that he had nowhere to claim compensation for the loss.

Boars are not the only threat to emerge amid the area's ecological improvement. Over the past two to three years, wild leopards and Siberian tigers have been confirmed to have eaten sheep and cows in mountainous areas in Hebei and Heilongjiang provinces.

According to Chinese law, the local government should compensate victims for relevant losses caused by wild animals. However, as most local governments have no compensation standards or specific budget allocation for the damage, enforcement has been poor.

Last month, the masterplan released after the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee said a mechanism for paid use of natural resources and ecological compensation will be implemented to protect and manage the environment. Experts suggest such a mechanism should include compensating losses caused by wild animals.

"As the ecology in mountainous areas is improved, more wild animal damage cases are expected to occur. The government should pursue a balance between securing the interests of farmers and protecting wildlife," said Xiao Junlong, an agricultural expert with the Forestry Bureau of Chengde City.