Wild boar and deer road collisions rise sharply in Portugal

Collisions between vehicles and wild ungulates, especially wild boar, have risen almost continuously in Portugal over 15 years, according to Infraestruturas de Portugal, which recorded over 140 such incidents in 2025 on roads it manages, up from under 20 annually before 2015. A University of Aveiro project found over 500 boar-related accidents yearly nationwide between 2019 and 2020, now exceeding 1,000 annually, with Coimbra and Viseu among the worst-affected regions. Experts link the rise to boar population expansion. A government-backed research project aims to gather better population data and mitigation tools, while officials also flagged declining hunter numbers and farm losses exceeding €8 million a year in maize alone.