Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

African swine fever is a contagious viral disease that affects pigs and wild boar. Over the past decade, the disease has spread to several European countries and caused problems for pig production and wildlife management. An outbreak of African swine fever in Fagersta and Norberg municipalities in Västmanland County in 2023 led to the complete eradication of the wild boar population in the core area of the outbreak, due to control measures and the disease.
The aims of this bachelor thesis were to find out what a re-establishment of wild boars might look like in area where the entire wild boar population has been eradicated and how the national wildlife disease surveillance is affected by an outbreak of African swine fever.
The thesis included studies of the scientific literature on wild boar and African swine fever, and a field study including wildlife camera trapping in the core area of the outbreak to observe any recurrence, as well as a retrospective data collection of wildlife disease surveillance (Rapporteravilt.sva.se).
The results from the wildlife camera trapping confirmed that consistent recovery of the wild boar population has not occurred yet, but that several passing individuals have been captured on camera. This suggests that the recovery is gradual and that several factors affect how quickly the recovery of a wild boar population occurs. The Swedish outbreak of African swine fever resulted in an increase in number of reports to the national wildlife disease surveillance system during the outbreak, with a subsequent decrease the year after eradication of the disease.