Last year, wild boars were involved in 9,193 traffic accidents in Sweden. This is a significant increase after several years of decline to under 6,000 accidents per year.
It's hard for me to see that it's due to anything other than the wild boar population being on the rise. Whether the population has increased by exactly 55, 70, or 30 percent is hard to say, says Anders Broby, administrator at the Nature Conservation Agency's wildlife analysis unit, to ATL.
Extra hard hit are Västra Götaland and Skåne. Together, these two regions account for a third of all accidents.
Anders Broby notes that the decrease in traffic accidents in recent years and the fact that fewer animals have been shot by hunters may have led authorities to draw incorrect conclusions about the size of the wild boar population in Sweden.
Maybe they thought they had control of the situation, and apparently, we haven't, he says to ATL.
