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Barcelona plagued by hoards of wild boars

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Barcelona has been battling an influx of wild boars, with many venturing into the city and digging through bins and even attacking celebrities.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Latin pop star </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://oversixty.com.au/travel/travel-trouble/shakira-claims-she-was-attacked-and-robbed-by-wild-boars-in-barcelona" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Shakira</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> had to fight off several boars in September while walking in a park with her eight-year-old son. Though she made light of the incident on social media, local experts have taken action to manage the problem, which has been exacerbated by COVID-19 lockdowns.</span></p> <p><img style="width: 0px; height:0px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7845846/boars1.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/1bacf4d303274553ac4d695fff1f1b1f" /></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">A wild boar foraging in Molins de Rei, Barcelona in 2020. Image: Getty Images</span></em></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“So many wild boars in Barcelona, because in this case Barcelona is acting as an ecological sink,” veterinarian Carles Conejero told the</span> <em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-59352740" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">BBC</span></a></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“It means that the excess of wild boar population, they see Barcelona [as] a suitable environment to disperse.” </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">City Hall has been trapping the wild animals, then taking samples before killing them humanely.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though the decision has upset animal rights groups, Carles has said it has become necessary.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> “When they are piglets they are so nice and they are not dangerous,” he explained.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“But when they grow and they cause problems, they attack humans [and] dogs or they cause traffic accidents, then [they] are the animals that we need to remove.”</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Getty Images</span></em></p>

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Shakira claims she was attacked and robbed by wild boars in Barcelona

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Latin pop sensation Shakira took to Instagram on Wednesday to talk about an unexpected attack she and her 8-year-old son Milan experienced in a Barcelona park. In a series of now-expired stories, the singer talked about being attacked by several wild boars while walking through the park with her son.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The boars stole her purse, but fortunately she managed to wrangle it back, albeit with somewhat damaged contents. "Look how two wild boars that have attacked me in the park have left my bag," she said, while displaying her muddied backpack.</span></p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr">Shakira fue atacada por unos jabalíes en un parque y casi pierde su bolso. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/C%C3%B3moAmaneci%C3%B3Bogot%C3%A1?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CómoAmanecióBogotá</a> <a href="https://t.co/gczjHnvQOT">pic.twitter.com/gczjHnvQOT</a></p> — Tropicana Colombia (@TropiBogota) <a href="https://twitter.com/TropiBogota/status/1443224942024200196?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 29, 2021</a></blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"They have attacked me, they have shattered everything... and they were taking my bag to the forest with my phone. And in the end, they left me the bag/purse because I confronted them," Shakira added. She also shared two photos she took of the boars, which do look quite large and menacing. Fortunately, neither she nor her son were injured.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><img style="width: 300.7692307692307px; height: 500px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7844532/screen-shot-2021-09-30-at-42924-pm.png" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/9680355a6bd043c68e622d44c7a61ea5" /></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While it may sound preposterous for wild boars to even be inhabiting a park in a city like Barcelona, it is apparently a very real problem. According to a </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/30/boar-wars-how-wild-hogs-are-trashing-european-cities"><span style="font-weight: 400;">2019 </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Guardian </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">article</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the boars have been a problem for quite some time, with police logging over 1000 calls about nuisance boars in 2016. The animals cause thousands of road accidents each year, destroy property, hunt ground-nesting animals and their young, including endangered turtles’ eggs, and destroy crops, like fragile vine roots and shoots.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Boars can carry African swine fever, also known as ‘pig ebola’, which kills wild and domestic pigs. In 2014, this risk of disease threatened the global pork industry, and countries responded by erecting physical borders with neighbours, threatening embargos, destroying millions of farmyard pigs, and offering bounties for the culling of wild boars.</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Shakira/Instagram</span></em></p>

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