A recent project to tag and track wild pigs in Canada’s prairie provinces is being funded by the United States Department of Agriculture. With recent sightings less than 50 miles from the U.S. border, there is concern that these large, destructive, so-called Super Pigs will migrate into adjacent northern states.
Currently, officials in Montana, North and South Dakota, and Minnesota, say they have no wild hog problem, and they want to keep it that way. So, the University of Saskatchewan, working with the USDA, is catching Canadian prairie wild pigs and fitting them with GPS tracking collars.
Dr. Ryan Brook, a professor in the agriculture and bio-resources department at the University of Saskatchewan, is heading up the project. He says that his department has been working on a similar project for several years now.
He says, “This latest study builds on our work of looking at occurrences and national-scale mapping of pigs across Canada, and the next obvious question is ‘where are they likely to go next?’ Many of the northern U.S. states don’t have any, and they certainly don’t want them. This research was all funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to look at putting GPS satellite collars on pigs to track them.”
Many parts of the southern U.S. had a wild boar infestation for many years. However, these typically smaller animals originated from Spanish pigs and tend to prefer a warmer, moderated climate. The Canadian hybrid originated from domestic stock mixed with much larger Eurasian wild boar, which can often reach mature weights of 4-to-500 pounds. Just recently, a pregnant sow was captured that weighed nearly 650 pounds. These animals have adapted well to very cold temperatures due to their size, and they can have more litters, similar to domestic pigs.
Dr. Brook says his team has been using helicopters and net cannons to capture and collar the wild hogs so their herds can be tracked. Dr. Brook believes the best way to eradicate the roaming herds is with large, portable panel traps, so that groups of hogs can be caught during the night using food bait.
He says, “There has been work to set up these large panel traps and capture entire groups at once. Most of the provinces that have pigs in Canada have been doing that. But they’re so smart. So, we use helicopters, and we shoot a net out to restrain them, to hold them down and get a collar around their neck, and then let them go back into the wild.”
Like many American states, the Canadian prairie provinces have declared open-season-hunting on the wild pigs. But Dr. Brook says the panel traps are far more effective for eradicating the pigs in larger numbers. He believes that shooting individual animals does more harm than good because shooting simply makes the animals even more elusive and disperses the pig herds across the landscape more quickly.
Dr. Brook says, “Hunter’s success is really low. They find a group of pigs. Say they shoot 2 or 3 out of a group of ten. Well, the remainder becomes even more nocturnal and disperse across the landscape. You can remove animals, but the population doesn’t go down.”
Story provided courtesy of the NAFB News Service
