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Wild boar damage to crops in Gujarat often involved movement through fields

Indian wild boar in natural habitat
Conservation: Human–wildlife conflict, Management

When Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) move through standing crops, they can damage plants without eating them. A study of 143 agricultural fields in Vadodara district, Gujarat, examined this kind of crop damage alongside damage caused by feeding.

Researchers surveyed fields in the Desar, Karjan, Padra and Sinor blocks from September 2024 to October 2025. They recorded signs of Wild Boar and crop damage, interviewed farmers, and mapped locations using GPS. For closely spaced crops, they counted damaged plants in randomly placed 1 × 1 metre squares. For widely spaced fruit crops, they counted plants across selected fields. Feeding, trampling and lodging—the bending or flattening of plants—were recorded separately.

Damage differed among the surveyed crops

Average recorded damage was highest in maize, at 15.8%. Banana followed at 14.4%, and pearl millet at 14.0%. These figures describe the fields surveyed during the study; they are not a general ranking of how susceptible these crops are everywhere, nor are they estimates of lost harvest.

Field observations indicated that direct feeding was generally limited, while trampling and lodging as boars moved through standing crops contributed substantially to recorded damage. Farmers interviewed also commonly attributed damage to animals moving through fields, rather than to feeding alone. The study reported greater vulnerability near forest patches, riverine habitat and other refuge areas in the surveyed landscape, but those observations do not establish that proximity itself caused the damage.

Assessments that count only eaten plants may miss damage caused when animals pass through a crop. The study’s findings therefore support including trampling and lodging, as well as feeding, when assessing crop losses in the surveyed area. The authors conclude that assessments and management should be tailored to local conditions, especially where fields adjoin Wild Boar habitat. The study did not test mitigation measures, and its estimates apply to the surveyed fields, crops and study period—not to all of Vadodara or India.

Sources and image credit

  1. Assessment of Crop Losses Due to Wild Boar, Sus scrofa Linnaeus in Cropping System of Vadodara District, IndiaPrimærartikkel med fulltekst. Beskriver studieområdene og perioden, felt- og intervjumetodene, skade på ulike vekster, forskernes tolkning og studiens avgrensninger.

Image: Indian Wild Boar (Sus scrofa cristatus) in Bandhavgarh. Photo: JP Bennett / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. · CC BY 2.0 · Source

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