There is a new and invasive species menacing crops and cattle alike in Saskatchewan: Wild boar. Brought to the Prairies by gourmet food farmers, they are now running amock, eating everything from grain to small deer. Ryan Brook, an assistant professor in the college of Agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan, has been using wildlife cameras to track the tusked pig, which were first introduced in the south but are now as far north as Prince Albert (and also in Manitoba and Alberta). He is trying to alert farmers and governments that the wild boar population has the potential to get a lot worse, and spoke to the Post’s Jen Gerson:
Q: What’s going on over there?
A: Well, the short answer is that we don’t really have a great handle on it, but it looks like wild boar, we know that they’re in the province of Saskatchewan and we know that they’re reproducing in the wild. We know that a number of people have concern about the impacts they’re having in terms of crop damage and harassment of cattle. When you look at what’s happened in the U.S. over the last two or three decades, the number of wild boar has absolutely exploded and the range of wild boar in the us has grown from a couple of states along each coast to now a majority of states in the U.S. have wild boar. It’s costing literally billions of dollars in terms of crop damage and disease impact.
Q: How did the problem start?
A: These boar are not native to North America. They were brought over for farming purposes, escaped from domestic operations, or, in a couple of cases, were purposely released into the wild to create hunting opportunities. The ones that were released into the wild, some thought they wouldn’t do well; what’s actually happened is that there has been an explosion and they’ve done quite, quite well.
Q: When I think of wild boar I think of gentlemanly hunting pursuits and tasty tasty bacon. Why are these animals a problem?
A: They’re incredibly prolific animals, they’re probably the most prolific large mammal on Earth. They’re very large animals, between 60 and 80 kilos. The issue is that they will eat anything, so they do an awful lot of damage to agricultural crops. They tend to be rooters as well, they dig into the ground to get roots and bulbs and do an awful lot of damage to habitat. The other side of that is the potential for disease transmission is quite high. They have been known to harbour quite a shopping list of diseases and parasites, many of which can spread to people and livestock.
Q: You said they also harass cattle? What do they do to the cattle?
A: Producers complain quite a lot about this. They’re quite aggressive and livestock can be very upset at the sight of a boar. They push [cattle] off their feed and generally disturb them.
Q: Do we know how many boar are out there?
A: Certainly, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence coming from Saskatchewan and beyond that they’re seeing a lot of boar. This is a challenge, though, without having serious monitoring, we can’t really say whether the numbers are increasing, decreasing or staying the same. There’s some suggestion that there may be an inclination toward an increase.
Q: Is there a reason why we can’t hunt and eat the boar?
A: That does happen and certainly if you look at hunting websites across western Canada, there’s tremendous discussion out there about opportunities for hunting. They taste very very good and people enjoy that. But they reproduce so fast and spread so well that nowhere seems to be able to control them with hunting alone.
Q: It sounds like these creatures are large, mean, destructive, tasty rats.
A: Yes. The analogy to rats is a very good one with regard to their ability to reproduce and their impact on people. Certainly there’s been recognized losses and impacts already across the Canadian prairies and without a serious effort, I think we’re going to continue to see more of that.
