Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana are guarding their border against wild boars from Canada, reports the Globe and Mail.
Wild pigs roaming Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba pose a new threat because they are often crossbreeds that combine the survival skills of wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine to create a “super pig” that’s spreading out of control.
Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and one of Canada’s leading authorities on the problem, calls feral swine, “the most invasive animal on the planet” and “an ecological train wreck.”
Brook said Canada’s problem dates back only to the 1980s when it encouraged farmers to raise wild boar. When the market collapsed after peaking in 2001 and some frustrated farmers simply cut their fences, setting the animals free.
It turned out that the pigs were very good at surviving Canadian winters. Smart, adaptable and furry, they eat anything, including crops and wildlife. They tear up land when they root for bugs and crops. They could spread devastating diseases such as African swine fever which, if it gets into domestic pigs, would be economically devastating because pork exports would be banned. About 70 per cent of Canadian pork is exported.
They reproduce at an average six pigs per litter, two litters per year.
That means 65 per cent or more of a wild pig population could be killed every year and it will still increase, Brook said.
Hunting just makes the problem worse, he said. The success rate for hunters is only about two to three per cent and several states have banned hunting because it makes the pigs more wary and nocturnal – tougher to track down.
Wild pigs already cause around $2.5-billion in damage to U.S. crops every year, mostly in southern states such as Texas. They can be aggressive; a woman in Texas was killed by wild pigs in 2019.
Eradication of wild pigs is no longer possible in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Brook said. But the situation isn’t hopeless everywhere and a few U.S. states have eliminated them. The key, he said, is having a detection system that finds them early and fast, and then responds quickly.
Brook and his colleagues have documented 62,000 wild pig sightings in Canada. Their aerial surveys have spotted them on both sides of the Canada-North Dakota border. They’ve also recorded a sighting in Manitoba within 28 kilometres of Minnesota.
“Nobody should be surprised when pigs start walking across that border if they haven’t already,” Brook said. “The question is: What will be done about it?”
Brook said Montana has been the most serious about keeping wild pigs out. It banned raising and transporting wild pigs within the state.
“The only path forward is you have to be really aggressive and you have to use all the tools in the toolbox,” Brook said.
That could include big ground traps with names such as “BoarBuster” or net guns fired from helicopters. Some states and provinces embrace crowdsourced “Squeal on Pigs” tracking programs. Scientists have also studied poisons such as sodium nitrite, but they risk harming other species.
In 2011 in Mississippi Michael Mims killed a 750-pound wild boar while it was in the midst of a fight with five dogs in the middle of a corn field.The same year Mike Parker in a neighbouring county killed a 750-pound sow.
