A Spanish holiday resort is set to use archers to keep tourists safe from wild boars roaming town streets at night.
Officials in Denia near Benidorm on the Costa Blanca placed cage traps at strategic points around the municipality to try to reduce the growing numbers of the animals.
The wild boars have been leaving their natural habitat in the countryside to search for food.
The cages were fitted with cameras to enable town hall chiefs to keep count on the amount of wild boars captured and avoid accidents involving people getting trapped by mistake, but the system yielded poor results.
Local councillors have now confirmed they are in contact with expert archers in a bid to stop the animals eating farmers’ crops, causing traffic accidents, messing up golf courses and in a worst case, but rare scenario, attacking humans.
The plan to use arrows as weapons has been drafted because bullets are forbidden.
Denia’s environment councillor Maite Perez Conejero confirmed at a full council meeting officials were in talks with the Hunting Federation in Alicante, the province Denia is in, and were studying a coordinated operation involving hunters in different parts of the municipality.
She said she was confident that in just over a fortnight draft proposals outlining how the scheme would work on public and private land would be in place.
Colombian pop star Shakira revealed in September last year she was “attacked” by two wild boar who tried to “rob” her while she was in a park in Barcelona with her son Milan, now nine.
The singer showed a bag she claimed was destroyed by the animals in a home-made video she posted on her Instagram Story.
The 45-year-old mum-of-two, whose partner is Barcelona footballer Gerard Pique, showed off her handbag as she said of the bizarre incident in an Instagram story: “Look at how two wild boar which attacked me in the park have left my bag.
“They were taking my bag to the woods with my mobile phone in it. They’ve destroyed everything.”
She then added as her son walked off in the background: “Milan tell the truth. Say how your mummy stood up to the wild boar.”
The singer did not detail when the incident took place or which park it occurred in.
Neither Shakira, full name Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, or her son appeared to have been injured.
Wild boars have increasingly come into towns and cities to forage for food, with the numbers growing during the coronavirus pandemic.
Barcelona resident Xavier Bosch told just before the incident Shakira was caught up in how he was bitten by a wild boar near the city’s Tibidado Amusement Park after going with his family to watch meteor showers and shooting stars.
He ended up reporting the attack to Barcelona City Hall.
