This winter, not only did the residents of Islamabad have to navigate through the dense fog that just lifted, but they also have to continue to be on the lookout for the hordes of wild boars that are freely roaming the roads and greenbelts. Perhaps emboldened by the dense fog, the wild boars or hogs seem to have taken over the capital’s streets from dusk to dawn, when they are the most active.

“I can’t go out of my house after 5pm for a walk and the wild boars are still around when I drop my children to school in the mornings. We keep our gates closed at all times and the children are not allowed to play on the street”, says Shazia Khan, a resident of Hillside Road in E-7.

Where have all these boars come from? Most reside and nest in the nearby Margalla National Park, hiding in the thick undergrowth during the day.

Their numbers have proliferated in recent years because of the regular supply of free food in the form of garbage skips. “They are omnivores and eat anything – they are experts of garbage in the animal kingdom”, explains Richard Garstang, conservation adviser with WWF-Pakistan who resides in Islamabad near the park. “Normally in the wild, a female would have up to four piglets, but given the broad spectrum of garbage available to them in the city throughout the seasons, the female will now have eight piglets”.

The natural predator of the wild boar, the common leopard, has also disappeared from the area given the encroachment of itshabitat by villagers.

The protected Margalla National Park covers only around 17 square kilometer and can sustain just one leopard at a time, since they tend to be extremely territorial and need more room in which to roam and hunt. In recent years, one could not find traces of a single leopard in the park.

Officials from WWF-Pakistan say that it is difficult to estimate the total population of wild boars in the capital since no survey has been conducted; it would be safe to say that they are probably in their thousands. Aside from garbage, wild boars eat crops as well and have an excellent nose, which they use to dig for insects. They can easily dig under fences and that explains their mysterious appearance in the grounds of the heavily barricaded Presidency. “They use their snouts as a shovel to dig,” explains Garstang. “They can get around most fences”.

However, their biggest danger appears to be vehicles, especially at night. “They tend to run across the roads in single file. They have poor road sense and can cause considerable damage to cars”. They can also attack humans especially when they are cornered or feel threatened. “Each year they kill a couple of farmers in the Punjab and Sindh. Wild boars have massive lower canines and razor sharp teeth”. They can easily kill dogs and that probably explains the absence of stray dogs in the capital.

Each year CDA promises to do something about this menace, but Garstang warns that “sporadic poisoning is too indiscriminate and a horrible way to control their population”. He advises instead of getting to the root of the problem. “It is actually the rag pickers who throw out the biodegradable garbage from the containers onto the roads where the wild boars can access it. The wild boars also tend to hide and feed in the dirty nullahs and streams where people dump their garbage”. Control Islamabads garbage and you can curtail the growth of wild boars, he added.

Garstang advocates an effective culling practice like trophy hunting. “Certainly it could be introduced. German and Spanish hunters would be interested and CDA can even make money while making the wild boars pay for their way”.

The director in-charge of handling the wild boars situation from the Capital Development Authority (CDA) refused to give a statement to the press about what they were doing to control the population of the wild boars unless he had permission from his “seniors”. However, officials from the media section of the CDA have been assuring the residents of Islamabad that they are taking “all possible measures to control the increasing population of wild boars.”

Given the continuing threat of terrorism in the capital, it remains to be seen whether the hunting of wild animals would be tolerated in the area any time soon. For now, the residents of Islamabad just have to make way for the wild boars.

“I am scared of them, they are not scared of me”, says Mohammed Jawaid, a masseur who frequents the F-6, F-7 and E-7 sectors near the Margalla Hills on foot each evening from his home in the Blue Area. “I try to keep my distance from them but recently one of them came towards me and I was terrified. I know security guards in the area who have been attacked by them at night. I picked up a rock and threw it and then ran away. I ended up in a ditch, all scratched up but at least I was not bitten”.