Wild boar sightings increase in Turkey’s largest city as huge construction projects drive the animals from nearby forests

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Wild boars are returning to Istanbul as giant construction projects shrink their habitat in the city’s northern forests.



Last week, a group of boars stormed the garden of a luxury housing complex in Sariyer on Istanbul’s European side, sending residents and a security guard running.

The animals quickly disappeared into a nearby wood, but sightings of boars in the inner districts of Turkey’s largest city have become more frequent over the past months.

Ecologists and activists believe that Istanbul’s enormous construction projects are driving the boars from their natural habitat in the city’s northern forests, where a third Bosphorus bridge is nearing completion and a third airport is being built.

“We’re destroying their homes, their food sources,” said Onur Akgül of the Northern Forest Defence, a movement dedicated to protecting Istanbul’s remaining green spaces.

“They can’t go north. They can’t go live in the sea. So they migrate into the city.”

When a boar was spotted swimming in the Bosphorus waters around the central Beyoğlu district in November, the forestry and water affairs minister Veysel Eroğlu dismissed the idea that construction was to blame, saying “the pig did what pigs do”.

Yet the locations of the third bridge and the new airport, planned to be the world’s largest, remain controversial and have provoked lawsuits and protests.

“Instead of an ecosystem, we’ll have asphalt,” said Sedat Kalem, WWF Turkey’s conservation director.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aerial of historical Istanbul. Photograph: Izzet Keribar/Getty Images/Lonely Planet Images

“The ecological health of the area is lost. The incidents with the wild boars, that is one of the indicators of what is happening.”

The northern forests and wetlands are considered to be vital for Istanbul’s sustainability, as the area produces much of the city’s drinking water. Twenty years ago, the then-mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, even described the prospect of a third bridge as “murder”.

Now, it seems hardly a day goes by without news of another mega-project. Last week, prime minister Davutoğlu announced a three-storey tunnel underneath the Bosphorus while president Erdoğan hoped to accelerate the construction of a canal that would turn Istanbul’s European side into an island.

“All of these big infrastructure projects are crossing those green areas in the north of the city, with the motorways, with the bridge, with the new airport and the planned canal,” said Kalem.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Belgrad forest, Istanbul, Turkey. Photograph: Alamy

He worries that the widespread deforestation accompanying these projects will do irreparable damage to Istanbul’s diverse ecosystem. The forests are an important bird migration corridor and host thousands of plant and animal species.

With construction ongoing and millions of trees slated for removal, Kalem expects an increasing number of wild animals to escape into urban Istanbul.

“I think even more and more areas and species will be lost, unfortunately,” he added.

“The size of excavation, of construction, is enormous. It’s something which we have not witnessed – ever.”

Tuba Inal Çekiç, of Istanbul’s chamber of urban planning, said that the construction would affect the city’s human population as much as its animals: deforestation would change the behaviour of winds and rain and increase already high pollution levels. The chamber therefore considers the northern forests a “red line”.

“You have to expand on the shore of the Marmara sea, not on the northern area, not on the Bosphorus,” Çekiç said. “Because that forest area is our lungs, the lungs of the city.”