Feral pigs cause havoc as they stamped through popular Costa del Sol residential area in the middle of the night

A HERD of wild boars in search of a midnight feast have startled residents in a Costa del Sol urbanization.

Residents in La Cala del Moral were startled in the middle of the night after a herd of twelve wild boar – a mix of adults and their offspring – took to the streets of the Calaflores residential development, near the seafront promenade of Cala del Moral.

This is not the first time that a group of wild boars have come down from the Montes de Malaga (Malaga Mountains) to Rincon de la Victoria, crossing urbanisations such as Parque Victoria to the north of the motorway.

On many a hot Malaga night, wild boar from the Montes de Malaga, alone or in gangs, descend on nearby towns and mingle with the human population wreaking havoc in their wake as they root up turf, munch on rubbish, attack dogs, hold up traffic and run into cars.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, Wednesday, they were seen again in La Cala del Moral.

The Policia Local were alerted, who in turn contacted experts from the Don Animal company who are in charge of animal collection in the Costa del Sol-Axarquia area.

The capture operation lasted just over two hours, between 1am and 3am approximately in the morning, where experts, with the use of anaesthetic darts and capture loops, were able to round up six of the twelve specimens.

According to Jose Antonio Villodres, head of Don Animal, wild boars have been causing havoc in the area for years due to overcrowding of the species in their natural habitat.

“They do not have enough food in the mountains and frequent residential areas looking to feed on anything they find,” he said, adding that around fifty specimens, including wild boar and Vietnamese pigs, are captured in the area each year.

The wild boars now await a decision about whether they should be released back into the wild or euthanised.

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