MALACCA: Farmers have called on the Malacca state government, as well as the Wildlife and National Parks Department to introduce a new, sustainable mechanism that will help control the wild boar population, instead of merely relying on efforts to shoot or trap the animals.
They also view as sensible, the suggestions by Chief Minister Adly Zahari (pix) and Malaysian Nature Society president Prof Dr Ahmad Ismail, that proper forest and ecological management would be key towards addressing the problem.
At the same time, they stressed that focus must be placed on more important ways of reducing the population of the animals compared to other efforts such as determining whether the increase in wild boar was due to their migration from Sumatera, Indonesia.
Vegetable farmer Rahmat Ali, 49, told Bernama today that the occurrence of wildlife, particularly wild boar, disturbing or destroying crops at Kampung Bukit Durian here, was a yearly affair, with villagers having to spend between RM300 and RM500 each time to hire hunters to kill the animals – RM50 is paid for each wild boar and RM30 for each monkey.
“To me, efforts to improve forest and environmental management is a better option than shooting these animals,“ he said, explaining that villagers’ losses due to damaged crops are compounded by the money spent on hunters.
Another farmer, Abdullah Ahmad, 47, from Durian Tunggal, said apart from destroying crops, the wild boar also caused damage to house compounds.
In a Bernama report yesterday, Adly said the problem could be addressed through a number of ways including a review of forest management to ensure there was a habitat for the wild boars to live in and reproduce, and this would contribute towards environmental sustainability.
He also said the animals had come out of their breeding grounds because they had been affected by development activities. — Bernama
