MARCH 13 — Last week, a wild boar charged into a woman outside my neighbourhood coffee shop.
The animal had somehow strayed into the rather crowded plaza by the coffee shop at Block 848 on the edge of Yishun.
Frightened by the presence of a large number of humans, it began to race around and eventually knocked over a woman who suffered minor injuries.
This is among the most unusual and exciting things to have happened in my neighbourhood recently and Yishun has a notorious reputation for exciting happenings—so that’s saying a lot.
A sudden wild boar rampage in the heart of the heartlands.
We do share this little island with various creatures and such incidents are inevitable.
While of course this was a very distressing incident for the woman the boar ran into, overall, it might be seen as a positive that Singapore still has a thriving ecosystem that sometimes spills into our homes.
In fact, wild boar and other animal encounters seem to have increased over the past few years.
Now is this because wildlife in Singapore is flourishing or because the pressure of development and urban expansion is forcing animals into crowded populated areas?
I think it’s probably a combination. On one hand, Singapore has improved its conservation efforts — our canals are cleaner and greener than ever, the protected areas around our reservoirs are receiving plenty of care and attention.
But on the other hand a lot of fringe green spaces are being cleared. Old patches of scrub and semi jungle — these were important holdouts for wildlife and also places for wildlife from core protected areas to spill over to.
Now with fewer unmanicured spots left, animals that leave our well managed core reserves end up directly in populated areas.
Now the coffee shop in Yishun where the boar incident took place is in a very urban and built-up area.
There are no forests in the immediate vicinity so it is not clear where the animal came from; apparently it eventually went off in the indirection of Yishun Park which does have some patches of green.
But the truth is eventually either it or something like it will come back. These are no longer freak encounters. Encounters with boar, otter, deer are increasing in built-up areas across Singapore.
I think increasingly we need to understand that like Covid-19 which we are increasingly treating as endemic and a part of life, these animals too are endemic and a part of life.
I mean in the case of wild boars etc. they literally are endemic. They have been here much longer than us and from the point of view of most of our island’s fauna — we are the virus.
And we have been killing them and destroying their habitats for years and this cannot continue.
Covid-19 proved that global supply chains can be taken for granted. Supplies of fish from Japan and beef from Australia may not simply flow in as they’ve done in previous decades.
There needs to be a focus on local supply chains and local or at least regional production.
And our ability to meet at least some demand for food locally depends on our local ecology and on the quality of our soil and water.
The local fauna are essential to maintaining and monitoring the quality of the environment we all ultimately depend on.
People in many parts of the world don’t blink when a wild boar pops up and the same will have to happen here.
Though of course our intensely urban development means creatures will need more management when they do wander into built-up areas, it is time we try to accommodate them and not simply clear them out of the way.
In the recent past, wild boars involved in these incidents have been culled — but is culling animals a really viable solution?
The animals remaining in Singapore — boars, deer, monkeys — rarely pose a deadly threat to people and we live with all sorts of deadly threats every day from viruses, road accidents etc.
So I really don’t see how culling and killing provides any kind of long term solution — as with Covid-19 I suspect learning to live with this is probably a better way to go than trying to eliminate them.
At least, it is never boaring.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
