Costs of traffic accidents with wild boar populations in Sweden

Traffic accidents with wild boar have increased rapidly over the last years in Sweden. This paper calculates and predicts costs of current and future accidents, totally and for different Swedish counties, based on estimates of wild boar populations. A logistic population model is assumed, and econometric methods are used for calculating populations with panel data on traffic accidents, traffic load, and landscape characteristics for each county. The results show an average growth rate of 0.48, which varies between 0.39 and 0.52for different counties. This, together with predictions on changes in traffic load, forms the basis for calculations of costs of traffic accidents for a 10 year period. In total, the predicted costs can increase from 60 million SEK in 2011 to 135 or 340 million SEK in 2021 in present value depending on hunting pressure. The variation in cost increases is, however, large among counties, increasing by tenfold in Stockholm and Södermanland where the wild boar populations are relatively small and by approximately 50% in counties with mature populations.