While some are charmed, others fear invading boars
The wild pigs of Haifa might not fly, but they seem to do almost everything else.
The boars snooze in people’s paddling pools. They snuffle across the lawns. They kick residents’ soccer balls and play with their dogs. They saunter down the sidewalks and sleep in the streets. Some eat from the hands of humans, and they all eat from the trash.
The wild boars of Haifa aren’t particularly wild.
In many countries, animal sightings increased after the pandemic began and people deserted public spaces. But Haifa’s boars started their conquest well before the coronavirus wrought its havoc. In 2019, residents reported 1,328 boar sightings to the city authorities, almost 40% more than the 2015 total.
The growing presence of the boars has sparked a rumpus in local discourse. For some, the boars are a menace and the council is to blame for their continued presence. For others, they are a charming addition to an already unusual place.
Israel’s third-largest city, with a population of nearly 300,000, has an eccentric topography. Built on the side of Mount Carmel, the city in Israel’s north is divided between districts that line a flat waterfront and neighborhoods that straddle a rugged mountaintop. Ravines, or “wadis,” run through the city, creating a rare blend of urban and natural (albeit one often pockmarked by industrial waste).
“It’s a secret garden,” said Rona Shahar, a painter and Haifa resident. “And there is a magical side to it.”
Haifa’s ethnic makeup is also atypical: It is one of the few Israeli cities where Jews live alongside significant numbers of Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 10% of the city’s population. It is the home of the leader of the country’s largest Arab political party and its residents elected a female mayor before Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
“I wish we could all in Israel learn to live like they live in Haifa,” said Edna Gorney, a poet, ecologist and lecturer at the University of Haifa. “It’s an example of coexistence — not only between Arabs and Jews, but also between humans and wildlife.”
For dreamers like Shahar, the painter, it feels almost unsurprising that boars should live cheek by jowl with Haifa’s humans. After moving to Haifa in 2008, she found a city that lends itself to the surreal, and began a series of paintings and drawings that explored what it would look like if the city were overrun with friendly tigers.
“I just had no idea there would actually be wild animals roaming the streets,” Shahar said. “It seems appropriate in some way.”