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Wildlife management across Europe is increasingly characterised by a 'war on wild boar'. In response to epidemiological and economic threats to pig production and agriculture, state agencies, policymakers and hunting organizations have altered their management as they attempt to contain wild boar. Through a cross-section overview of eight European countries with differentiated strategies - the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Norway, Poland, Spain, and Sweden - we analyze five critical components of contemporary wild boar management: categorizing, responsibilizing, calculating, controlling, and sanitizing. We consider three critical triggers that change how wild boar and, by extension, a range of other 'wild' species are managed in relation to the aforementioned categories: (over)abundance and population growth, biosecurity crises, and technological innovation. While these triggers, on one hand, might streamline transborder management policies, we show how wild boar also uproot longstanding wildlife management cultures by transforming hunting traditions, landowner-hunter relations and meat handling practices., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Visual media are one of the fastest and most effective tools informing the public about conservation goals and convincing societies to support conservation actions. Similar mechanisms functioned in the past, only within a much longer time scale and different communication channels. We analyse the evolution of European bison's depictions between 1500 and 1900 in the context of building public awareness of the species and its conservation needs. Experts evaluated the anatomical accuracy of thirty eight images of the species from the period analysed, and their conservation appeal was assessed by using an online survey of the general public. Existing knowledge and previous publications allowed authors to describe the development of the scientific knowledge about European bison in 1500-1900. By juxtaposing this with anatomical accuracy of depictions, a conclusion was reached that the accuracy of depictions was not directly linked to the state of knowledge about the species. In the survey, the public reception of the accuracy of historical pictures of European bison, as well as their potential to be used in conservation campaigns, was connected with subjective appeal of depicted animals. This lesson can be translated to modern conservation campaigns using mass media and global communication channels: popularization of knowledge on species of concern should be accompanied by appealing depictions of these species to strengthen public reception., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Samojlik et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)