A group of hunters are waging war on a massive population of wild boar in China's Qinling Mountains. The men are paid by local governments to cull the wild species, as they devastate crops in the region.
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00:00As night falls in China's Qinlin Mountains, these hunters emerge, scouring the landscape
00:06for boars equipped with knives, tracking technology and dogs.
00:13Dubbed city hunters, these men have taken on the task of culling the wild tusk pigs,
00:17which have run rampant in the region and gained a reputation for devastating local crops.
00:22This is a kind of artificial culling, because our village is right next to the mountains.
00:29Our village also has trees in the middle of the village, which are damaged every year.
00:34At the time, we thought it was fun, so we took an old man with us to cull the wild boars.
00:42After culling once, we thought it was pretty good.
00:46The boars were a protected species for over two decades,
00:49but they were removed from the list in 2023, their population soaring to two million.
00:55That's when locals realised the boars were a problem, costing them thousands of dollars in crop losses.
01:01We had to take them to the government, to the farm.
01:05So we had to take them to the farm.
01:09For their service, the hunters received bounties of up to US$410 from local governments.
01:15They've also gone viral on social media, gathering almost 350,000 followers on China's version of TikTok.
01:22These men hope to use social media to earn enough money to cover their expenses
01:26through advertising and selling hunting products.
01:29We spent more than 1 million yuan the other day.
01:32That's less than two years' worth of money.
01:39If we make a profit, we can make a little more money on TikTok.
01:43We can make over 300,000 yuan on TikTok.
01:48But there are those who disagree with their practices.
01:51Some followers say the use of hunting dogs is inhumane,
01:54while animal rights groups claim the boars are important in providing a food source for other endangered species.
02:00But with no government push to implement better crop protection or provide compensation for losses,
02:06these hunters are the farmers' last resort for helping them safeguard their livelihoods.
02:11James Lin and Rosie Grenninger for Taiwan Plus.