Invasive species can have a devastating effect on the environment. Kudzu was a climbing plant that was introduced to the United States in the late 19th century that grows incredibly fast and outcompetes other plants for resources. Rabbits in Australia had a devastating effect on ecology, causing significant problems with erosion.
And in Canada, a growing problem is the increasing number of wild boars.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, there was a push to diversify the types of producers in Canada, which led to new animals on farms such as ostriches. Another popular animal was the wild boar.
Unfortunately, between escapes and producers letting them go when they got tired of caring for them, they have grown and thrived in the wild – despite many doubts about whether they’ll make it through a Canadian winter. Due to a high rate of reproduction and few or no natural predators, they’ve become a significant invasive species.
“There’s a factor of their biology that makes them one of the most invasive mammals on earth,” said Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and a researcher of wild boars. “They can have two litters a year with six per litter. They’re sexually mature at six to eight months. You do the math: you start with one adult female sow, and she has six and six and six and six over two years … and at the end of that two year period, the majority are sexually mature.”
Conventional methods of lowering animal populations don’t really work on wild boar populations, mostly due to their high rates of reproduction.
In the past, Alberta has had a bounty, but the problem with that is unless a hunter takes out a whole herd of boars (called a “sounder”), the few remaining boars will disperse, find boars elsewhere, and reproduce, which causes a new sounder to grow. Brook said that some hunters disagree that a bounty doesn’t work, but they are used to animals like elk and whitetail deer, which only reproduce once a year.
“You just keep killing and killing animals and the population keeps going up,” Brook said.
The only thing that will work for control is removing the entire sounder.
“If you have 10 animals and kill nine, the entire program is a failure,” he added.
Brook and his team are working on tracking the boars and finding out where they are congregating. They have trail cameras set up in central Saskatchewan, as well as some GPS collars. Through this, Brook and his team are able to track the boars in real time.
“The more I researched it, the more I looked at it, and the more people I talked to out of the US and Europe, it became clear that boar was going to be one of the biggest issues in Canada going forward,” he said.
One interesting thing he learned is that the cameras catch the boar being active equally during day and night. Typically, if there is pressure on the populations, the boar will be completely nocturnal.
Wild boars have been known to get into crops and since they are rooting animals, they dig up the crops and cause damage, which Brook compares to a roto-tiller. In addition to crop damage, they have been known to harass livestock, do damage to local ecosystems, eat eggs and birds, take down whitetail deer, and do damage to wetlands. While there hasn’t been significant disease detected in Canada due to wild boars, they are known vectors of parasites and disease.
“It’s a significant concern that hasn’t been taken very seriously,” Brook said.
There haven’t been reports of them attacking people, but Brook said, as with any large animal in rural Saskatchewan, care and caution needs to be taken.
“You think you know what you’re doing, but then they do something bizarre,” he said. “They’re very unpredictable.”
Wild boars have been an issue in the US for far longer than in Canada, where they are a “billion dollar problem.” Recently, there was a major recall of spinach due to e.coli infection from the boars.
“They call them an ecological trainwreck down there,” Brook said.
To combat the boars, the US has come up with some aggressive techniques to get rid of the animals.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) employs retired snipers to kill boars and has recently purchased two new helicopters, which will be working full-time to target the boars. They have also allocated $20 million per year to control wild boar.
“The US is being extremely aggressive and co-ordinated,” Brook said. There are plans to control the boar at the state level as well as across the continental US.
But Brook says Canada has taken the opposite approach. Because it isn’t a devastating problem here yet, the government doesn’t want to allocate funds preventing it from becoming one. There are exceptions here and there, but for the most part, there’s little provincial support and no cohesive, nationwide plan.
“It’s a bit of a wild west show right now in terms of being not a whole lot going on,” Brook said.
Not to say that there hasn’t been anything done. Alberta has a bounty on them, but as it was previously stated, only killing a few in a sounder won’t have a significant effect on the population overall. Brook said that Manitoba has been the most proactive, declaring the province a wild boar control zone almost ten years ago. The province also employs a “Judas pig,” which is a domestic boar fitted with a GPS collar and then released into the wild. It leads hunters to a sounder, and they go in and kill all the boars.
According to Brook, the only way to eradicate the problem is to have co-ordination between the provinces and the US, and have ground teams accompanied by air support, removing the boars sounder by sounder.
“Even if one of the prairie provinces got really serious about controlling it, there would be cross border movements as well,” he said. This is part of the reason his research is being mainly funded by the USDA: they’re worried about Canadian boars crossing over into the US.
Brook also said that being able to monitor the boars is important, since research teams have to be able to see where the boars are congregating and whether eradication efforts are working.
“Any program you’re putting in a significant investment … you have to be able to monitor and say, ‘did we do better?’” he said.
The average person can help by reporting any wild boar sightings to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, their local RM office, or to Ryan Brook at the University of Saskatchewan. As well, anyone can keep up with the research through Brook’s team’s Facebook page, Wild Hog Watch.
