The massive protests against the massjakt of wild boar in Poland

A new miljöfejd, which immediately has become political, has exploded in Poland. The conflict concerns the government's plans to – from Saturday 12 January to end of February – shoot of the majority of the country's between 200.000 and 300.000 wild boar.

The new naturstriden occurs just a year after the EUROPEAN court of justice forced the nationalkonservativa Polish government to stop the deforestation – according to the critics, the pure devastation – in the Bialowieza reserve, Europe's oldest primeval forests.

that logging was necessary to protect the forest against the attacks from the skadeinsekten granbarkborre. Environmentalists did rather commercial reasons, to the harvesting.

Protests against the firing outside the Polish parliament on Wednesday. Photo: Janek Current/AFP/TT

As the reason for the massive harvest rate of wild boar, the Polish minister of environment Henryk Kowalczyk that it is the only way to come to grips with the dreaded and highly infectious african svinpesten (ASF).

the Authorities ' plan is that up to 90 per cent of Poland's wild boar to be shot. One way to encourage it is a bounty. The highest reward is the equivalent of 2,000 crowns for an adult sow.

the meet of the powerful objections. Many hunters protest against the firing violates their code of ethics for viltjakt.

the Feelings of storms, and the pitch is high, very spaced. On social media spread images of the nazityske war criminal Hermann Goering in the wild boar hunting in occupied Poland.

”Someone who is sick in the head have decided that all the wild boar should be shot, including pregnant sows and those who already have kids. I appeal to all my colleagues not to take part in this massacre,” writes a hunters ' association in the south of Poland in an open letter.

”Vildsvinsmassaker”, it says on one of the signs held up by Polish activists. Photo: Janek Current/AFP/TT

at the university of Wroclaw, said to the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza:

– For some people does exist, apparently no ethical boundaries or limits of decency. This is a compound of brutality and stupidity, and an application of a fascist ethics against the wild boars, that go out to eradicate the undesirable.

the Backdrop will even with purely scientific arguments, which goes out to a mass extinction of the wild boar does not have any effect on the spread of swine fever.

in a report of the Polish academy of sciences that there is no study that has shown a correlation between the amount of wild boar and the spread of ASF. On the contrary, researchers have found that areas that have been cleared from the wild boar has återbefolkats of the other wild boars that come from other countries in eastern Europe, where the svinpesten is even more widespread.

A mass extinction of the wild boars can in fact be unsafe for humans, according to some researchers. Wild boar eats rodents and rats and compete for their food, such as acorns. Skogsgnagare are carriers of ticks, and spreads thus for the man of dangerous diseases such as lyme disease and encephalitis (TBE). Disappear wild boars, it can mean an increase in infected ticks.

The Polish hunters association board of directors highlights in a statement the species ' importance to the ecological balance of the country's forests. The hunters admits to a certain reduction of the vildsvinspopulationen may be necessary.

300 Polish scientists that the government immediately stop the firing of the country's wild boar: “We believe that the decision has been taken on political grounds and do not have any factual basis”.