Hunting suspended, farmers complain of growing wild boar menace

 

A motorist had a narrow escape recently when he avoided a wild boar which ran across a road in Kuala Kangsar suddenly.

KUALA KANGSAR: Perak police have suspended hunting licences, to curb poaching and misuse of firearms, but farmers say wild animals, especially wild boars, are proliferating and destroying their crops and produce.

Padi, fruit and vegetable farmers claim that the population of wild boars has grown quite a bit with hunters not being allowed to shoot them, with the animals also causing road accidents on roads in the interior.

Last week Perak police chief Mior Faridalathrash Wahid told district police chiefs to continue the suspension of hunting licences, introduced in 2020 to prevent illegal hunting and misuse of firearms.

“Applications for hunting licenses would not be accepted until further notice,” he said in the directive.

Many holders of licensed firearms have started reapplying for hunting permits as Covid-19 restrictions have been eased.

Padi farmer Badaruddin Ghazalan from Kampung Talang Mesjid here said he has been badly hit after wild boars damaged his harvest recently.

Badaruddin Ghazalan with part of his damaged padi field in the background.

“I used to harvest two lorry loads of padi but I managed only one this time. The wild boar population has grown since the hunters stopped coming to hunt them,” he told FMT.

“They attack at night and how do the authorities expect us to shoo them away? We appealed to the police to revoke the suspension but we have been refused.”

Another farmer, Hamdan Jaafar, said four hectares of his 11 hectare padi farm was destroyed by wild boars last month, resulting in heavy losses for his family business.

Hamdan Jaafar.

“We are appealing to the police to consider our plight. There are just too many wild boars, they are out of control,” he said.

Khairul Nazar, who has a coconut plantation in Kota Lama Kiri here, said his nine-month-old young coconut trees have been damaged. “If we don’t shoot the wild boars, I am afraid I am going to suffer more losses.”

A ketua kampong in a Perak village told FMT that the increasing number of wild boar and monkeys was also causing havoc at tapioca farms and orchards.

“A blanket suspension is not fair as we have to hunt them down and kill them as the farms are our source of their livelihood,” he said.

The licence suspension was announced two years ago by the Inspector-General of Police, then Abdul Hamid Bador. He said hunting licences had been granted to about 6,900 licensed firearm holders.

Many of them owned a gun to protect their crops or for personal safety, but some abused it by going hunting or poaching.

Hamid advised them to shoo them away instead of shooting.

FMT has sought comments from Mior Faridalathrash. - FMT