The wild boar is a common species in the Czech countryside and is plentiful in Prague as well. It is suited by the varied landscape here and above all by the plentiful food throughout the year.

Although they are active mainly in the evening and at night and usually rest somewhere in the undergrowth during the day, in the city they come close to people more and more often. We often fail to realise that illegal dumps of garden bio-waste, for instance, draw wild boar even closer to people’s homes. On top of that, the intense all-day use of every natural area — and dogs running loose without proper supervision — leaves the animals nowhere quiet to withdraw to during the day.

In recent years, then, wild boar in many parts of Prague have come into unwanted contact with residents or their dogs more often, and they also cause damage to City property, mainly by rooting up grassed areas or destroying the fencing around young plantations, which roe deer then easily get into and damage the young forest seedlings by browsing.

Because the wild boar breeds quickly and has no natural predator in Prague, its numbers have to be regulated by hunting or trapping. In the hunting grounds, usually in the outlying parts of Prague, this is done by game management clubs. On the City’s non-hunting land, particularly sites in the city centre or elsewhere among the buildings, Prague City Hall has entrusted this task to specific staff of our organisation. Culling is currently permitted everywhere without any limit on the number of animals, their age or sex. Interventions in a densely populated environment are very complicated from a safety point of view, so we often use trapping cages as well.

The question of wild boar concerns the whole of Prague. It comes up repeatedly in the Troja or Černý Most areas, for example, but in other places too.

We recommend that visitors walking their dogs in the forests and forest parks reckon in advance with the possibility of meeting wild animals, ideally keep their dogs on a lead and under supervision, and not let them run free. That can prevent a conflict.