Boar Invade Berlin, Bringing Fences Back to Cold War Barrier

By Leon Mangasarian

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Clemens von Saldern just erected an electric fence on the site of the Berlin Wall. The organic food distributor isn't rebuilding the Iron Curtain -- he's trying to stop wild boar from tearing up his garden.

Von Saldern, who built a house where the Cold War flashpoint once stood, is battling to hold back an invasion of tusked pigs that are digging up yards and parks throughout Berlin as they root for worms and flower bulbs with their tough, flat snouts.

``One day the builder told me, `That's a big dog you've got back there,''' said von Saldern, 44, who last summer moved with his wife and three children to the house in Potsdam, on the southwest border of Berlin. ``It was a wild boar staking out the garden as if he owned it.''

The animals gained better access to Berlin when the Wall fell in 1989. Now they're thriving thanks to a biogas boom that has fueled planting of the corn they love to eat and global warming, which has boosted survival rates for piglets. Some critics also blame Nazi-era hunting rules for rising numbers of the stiff-furred scavengers.

Berlin now has about 6,000 wild boar, said Thorsten Wiehle, deputy spokesman for the city Forestry Commission.

The population is climbing, as reflected in the number of boar killed by sportsmen. Hunters killed 42,258 last year in Brandenburg state, which surrounds Berlin, up from a low of 9,806 in 1972, according to the state Forestry Agency.

Pigs Attack

Boar have been found sleeping on compost piles in the city's wealthy Dahlem suburb, and are seen during the autumn devouring acorns on the edges of busy roads.

``Several elderly ladies feed the wild pigs so regularly that they've become tame,'' said Christoph Holstein, a Berlin city forester.

At full size, the hogs can be as long as five feet and weigh as much as 300 pounds.

The sharp tusks curling out of the mouths of male boar are two to five inches long and can make the animals more than just a nuisance. Three people were injured in an attack on Sept. 20 in the town of Hannoversch Muenden, the hunting magazine Wild und Hund said in its Nov. 2 issue. Wild boar killed a wolf in eastern Germany, the newspaper Bild reported Aug. 24.

The Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to prevent people in communist East Germany from fleeing to the West, also created a barbed-wire and concrete barrier for pigs. With its collapse, Berlin's 29,000 hectares (71,600 acres) of woods were reconnected to the countryside, giving boar easy access to the whole city.

Corn Explosion

Residents like von Saldern are building stronger fences because boar can push under normal chain-link barriers unless they are anchored to the ground.

The mortality rate among boar, which have few natural predators, is dropping because of milder winters, Holstein said. At the same time, the increased corn crop is providing them with a ready banquet.

``There's too much food,'' said Willi Kuhlmann, 72, a retired forester from Tauer, 60 miles southeast of Berlin, while sitting in his study surrounded by boar tusks and deer antlers. ``The sows now have two litters of piglets a year.''

In Brandenburg, the amount of land planted in corn quadrupled from 1989 to 2006, reaching 509,000 hectares last year, said Jens-Uwe Schade, a spokesman for the state's Ministry for Rural Development and Environment.

Most of the crop supplies Brandenburg's 80 biogas plants, Schade said. In 2004, the federal government passed a law to promote alternative energy, and Brandenburg state has approved construction of 72 more plants.

Nazis' Role

The proliferation of wild boar is also a legacy of the Nazi passion for hunting, said Elisabeth Emmert, federal chairman of the Ecological Hunting Association. The group, based in Roettenbach in central Germany, was set up in 1988 to oppose the policies it says are keeping game populations excessively high.

The 1934 ``Reich Hunting Law'' was sponsored by Hermann Goering, the Nazis' No. 2 man, who also held the title of Reichsjaegermeister, or chief hunter.

Regulations still in effect require that hunters provide game animals with enough food to ensure their survival during exceptionally cold winters. The clause is often abused by hunters who feed the animals too much and too often, Emmert said.

Back in Potsdam, von Saldern often sees boar in the street in front of his house. The fence out back has succeeded in protecting the garden, where a block of steel-reinforced concrete foundation left from the Berlin Wall still sits in one corner.

``I didn't want to rebuild the Wall,'' he said with a grin, while sitting on a half-completed terrace with his dachshund, Pau-Pau. ``Guess I'll just have to keep turning up the voltage of my fence.''