Regina Leader-Post

A GROWING PROBLEM

Boar numbers increasing

- ASHLEY ROBINSON arobinson@postmedia.com twitter.com/ashleymr19­93

When Ruth Kost first embarked on a western Canadian camping trip to track wild boars, she was a master’s student. Now, almost two years later, research is finally wrapping up and she is working on her PhD.

“It definitely has taken a lot longer than I anticipate­d just because it was such a large sample size,” said Kost, a student at the University of Saskatchew­an.

On Saturday Kost stopped by the Saskatchew­an Wildlife Federation’s annual convention to give an update on her research. For the last few years, Kost has been attending the convention to gain contacts from across the province.

“I’d sit at tables at lunchtime and be like, ‘So what can you guys tell me?’ But then I create that relationsh­ip and that’s what’s really helped,” she said.

At first people would say, ‘Oh I heard about you but I didn’t think you’d want my informatio­n.’ But to Kost any informatio­n about where the elusive wild boars were located was helpful.

When Kost first took off on a camping trip across Manitoba, Saskatchew­an and Alberta in the summer of 2015 the study was smaller. As she learned more about wild boars it expanded to include all 10 provinces.

Wild boars came to rural Saskatchew­an in the 1990s when some animals imported as livestock escaped. Kost has found their population has now spread across the southern part of the province.

In the last five years she has found there has been at least one wild boar seen or killed in most parts of the province south of Prince Albert.

“We’ve definitely just seen that Saskatchew­an has the most widespread population. Again, I can’t say numbers because we just don’t know but definitely the most widespread (among the provinces),” she said.

Only a small area in the southwest corner, around Cypress Hills and Kindersley, has not had any wild boar sightings.

Kost’s data led her to speculate that boars are using waterways to spread across the province into new areas where there were no farms for them to escape from.

“I feel like (boars) are just using those waterways as highways to kind of get across and find new resources or better habitat,” she said.

Kost has also been able to find out more about the damage wild boars cause. Crops and grain have been reported as being eaten by wild boars and soil has been torn up.

“If that’s big enough disturbanc­e (in the soil) an invasive plant species can occupy an area and then it’s kind of altered that plant community that could have been a food source or habitat source for wildlife,” she said.

Kost’s data collection is almost finished, with her findings to be released soon, but she is always interested in hearing anything about wild boar sightings. She can be contacted at rkost@usask.ca.

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 ?? RUTH KOST ?? U of S PhD student Ruth Kost says her research is showing that the wild boar population is spreading into southern regions of Sask.
RUTH KOST U of S PhD student Ruth Kost says her research is showing that the wild boar population is spreading into southern regions of Sask.
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Ruth Kost

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