Witnessing the death of a wild animal – often caused by human road traffic – implies grief but also curiosity, since it is its death that enables us to observe it closely. In France, the wild boar is the wild animal most frequently killed in collisions with vehicles. While it was considered a noble quarry in the past for its symbolic mythological significance – particularly because it is one of the few animals that attempts to fight back when hunted by humans, as depicted in the story of the mythological figure of Adonis who dies after being wounded by a wild boar during a hunt – the wild boar has become the target of human hatred because it disrupts road traffic, destroys crops and private properties and transmits diseases that can harm pork farming.

The wild boar is a political figure revealing the modern history of the relation of humans to their environment. The omnipresence of boars in Europe is man-made and recent. Fifty years ago, it was relatively rare to encounter a wild boar in the countryside. The status of wild boars changed with the agricultural policies of land consolidation that destroyed the bocage, hedges, embankments, ponds and trees and with the increasing use of pesticides, which led to the progressive disappearance of small hunted animals like rabbits, hares, partridges and pheasants and thus to the decline of hunting (Sangliers géographies d'un animal politique de Raphaël Mathevet et Roméo Bondon, 2022). Deprived of their quarry, hunting organisations supported the growth of the wild boar population to create a new target for hunters. These measures allowed the wild boar population to thrive, and humans began to fight against what they saw as an invasion of their territory. Thus, the fate of wild boars reveals humans' denial of their responsibility in the destructive transformation of the environment. 

The parallel between the erection of anti-wild boar fences to prevent swine fever in some European countries and the construction of anti-migrant walls is telling. Beyond the division made between humans and animals, the paradoxical movement between acceptance and rejection revealed by the political dimension of the wild boar recalls the way humans who are in a position of domination relate to their fellow human beings who suffer from poverty and wars shaped by colonialism. European countries reject and control migrants arriving on their territory in search of a better future, while their economic systems are dependent on the migrants’ working force. In this sense, rethinking our relations to animals can more generally call into question our sense of humanism.