Here Come the ‘Super Pigs’: Wild Crossbreed Boars Are Spreading Out of Control, Down From Canada to Northern US

A different kind of invasion threatens the northern US border.

Stories about endangered animal species, sad and worrying as they may be, are a dime a dozen.

For decades we’ve been bombarded with thousands of tales about how human activity was imperiling the survival of a variety of species, from whales and dolphins to the Brazilian Golden Monkey, with everything in between.

But there is now another kind of wildlife story in play, of an inverse nature.

It turns out that an ‘exploding population’ of ‘super pigs’ from Canada is coming south of the border, and northern states like Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana are starting to experience the disruptive nature of this wild boars.

These animals are said to be ‘very hard-to-eradicate’ – meaning it’s nearly impossible to kill them fast enough!

Associated Press reported:

“In Canada, the wild pigs roaming Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba pose a new threat. 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’.”

Pigs are originally Eurasian animals, not native to North America – but have been domesticated for centuries on the New World.

Canada’s problem started in the 1980s. Farmers started raising wild boar, but when the market collapsed some just set the animals free, starting a process that’s already become irreversible in some Canadian provinces.

“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 can spread devastating diseases to hog farms like African swine fever. And they reproduce quickly. A sow can have six piglets in a litter and raise two litters in a year.

That means 65% or more of a wild pig population could be killed every year and it will still increase.”

Feral swine have caused over $2.5 billion in damage to U.S. crops every year, and can be aggressive toward humans. A woman in Texas was killed by wild boars 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 responding quickly.”

Feral swine have been reported in at least 35 US states, according to the USDA.

 

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