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The young man had never before felt a large boar brush against his legs, charge him, try to knock him over. “As soon as I passed the wall, I was attacked violently. » It was a female, “a big animal” that the young man would never have imagined coming across in the city center.
Six wild boars killed
He only owed his salvation to the ladder that a neighbor was able to pass over for him. “I was able to pull myself up onto the wall again.” It was from there that he called for help, took a few photos, shot a video. The images, to see on charentelibre.fr, are edifying. “He was crazy, he was jumping against the bay windows of the house. He was panicked.”
A load in the shins of an 80 kg animal can quickly cause a lot of damage
Four police officers arrived, stunned. “And then very quickly, a lieutenant from louveterie intervened,” says Alexis Cassereau. He shot the animal in the garden. “I’ve never seen that”! Wild boars seem to be doing better and better in urban areas. The one on rue Laferrière did well. “We noticed, late Sunday afternoon, that my parents’ garden was devastated,” says Alexis Cassereau. Plowed. It could only be a wild boar. “To land in the garden, he only had one option: to jump from the rampart, at the top of rue Abadie, just before the stairs. It’s more than ten meters, maybe fifteen.”
Saturday evening, in the parking lot facing the Nile in Angoulême. The wild boars have taken up residence in town. They were shot dead on Avenue de Cognac.
Repro CL
The animal must have benefited from the foliage of a large fig tree which could have acted as a shock absorber. But to get into the neighbor's garden, she had to climb over a two-meter wall! The animals no longer hesitate to venture outside their natural playgrounds that have become the woods of Saint-Martin, Petit-Fresquet, Frégeneuil.
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During the night from Saturday to Sunday, a company got lost near the Barrouilhet crossroads, in Angoulême. The louveterie lieutenant has moved. He had to return three hours later “to find them on Avenue de Cognac”, explains Hervé Servat, the Director of Territories (DDT) at the prefecture. In town, the operation is delicate. “The police were able to block traffic. And the wolf lieutenant was able to find the moment to make several striking shots, in complete safety, at ten meters and with buckshot, at the foot of the green garden. He killed five of them.” The one in the garden on rue Laferrière is undoubtedly one of the family's survivors. Shot offline.
Louveterie lieutenants, the only ones permanently authorized by the prefecture to manage wildlife problems in the city and on the main roads of the city, have little alternative. Johanne Lagarde intervened on rue Laferrière on Sunday at the request of the police. Hardly surprised that a wild boar jumped from so high. Hardly surprised to find him like this in the middle of an urban area. “When they feel trapped, they are animals that have incredible resistance to evil. They are very very strong. And very agile,” explains the specialist.
Dangerous too. “They are wild animals,” says Johanne Lagarde. “They represent a danger to the population. A load in the shins of an 80 kg animal can quickly cause a lot of damage to people. For homes too.”
Animals that have become urban
Therefore, specialists recognize, there is little other solution than the elimination of animals. “There are far too many of them. It’s a national problem.” In the city, “there is no miracle solution”, believes Johanne Lagarde. “These are animals that have become urban, which do not have to be there.”
Push them away? “It’s not possible. A few weeks later, they will return. They know their peace is here. And given the wild boar problem, farmers would not appreciate it if we pushed them back into their fields.”
Stop them from coming? Illusory, it seems. “They adapt to everything, installing themselves in the embankments of national roads or railway lines. Even if the train passes them a meter from the hair, they feel safe. In town, you should especially avoid giving them food. This is where they found areas of refuge, not hunted. Areas of tranquility. They are real cockroaches that adapt to everything,” says the louveterie lieutenant. “They adapt to food, to town planning. They are not regulated. They stay there. Near urban areas, they hide in wastelands, in brambles.”
And they go out at night, “take the road, follow the street”. They just need to be afraid of a vehicle for them to start moving. “These are animals that need to walk. Except that it’s not their natural habitat, it’s not their place here.”
A series of forays into the city
February 2016. A hunt, organized in Angoulême, along the Nationale 10. Ten wild boars, which had taken up residence in the Saint-Michel sector, had been slaughtered.
July 22, 2019. Two wild boars who were causing panic near rue de l'Égalité, in Saint-Michel, by attacking a family's henhouse in particular, were shot dead by a lieutenant from the louveterie. After three weeks of damage, a sow and her calf were killed. They had chosen the surroundings of Girac to take up residence.
February 26, 2023. Fifty hunters along the Europe Way, closed to traffic for the day, in Ma Campagne. And fourteen wild boars shot during this unusual “hunting” Sunday. The prefecture had ordered the beating. For several weeks, wild boars had proliferated and increased the damage.
March 8, 2023. Still in the Europe route sector, a wild boar found dead had to be recovered by the louveterie lieutenant. The animal had probably been the victim of a collision with a car.
February 2004. The wild boars are back in the Basseau Grande-Garenne district. They returned part of the green spaces and the roundabout on Rue de la Charité.
Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 November 2024. Several animals were seen, photographed, filmed in Angoulême, at the crossroads of the Nile, in the L'Houmeau sector, avenue de Cognac, near the prefecture. This list is not exhaustive.
Peri-urban threat
“The action we are taking with the hunting federation should allow us to act on the peri-urban area. Regulatory actions to avoid too significant proliferation,” explains Hervé Servat, the DDT. “But we are at the maximum of what we can do” estimates Bruno Meunier, the president of the federation. In 2023, hunters harvested 7,800 wild boars and no one knows how many are left. “The big game budget is 900,000 euros annually, including 390,000 in compensation to farmers”
