Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Spread of wild pigs has Montana farmers worried

- AMANDA SHORT

Before wild pigs started posing a problem for Montana cattle rancher Maggie Nutter, she understood just how tough the invasive species could be. On a chilly early spring day, she watched her neighbour’s domesticat­ed sow give birth to five piglets in -20 C.

“It made me realize just how tough pigs in the wild must be,”

Nutter recalls.

With that in mind, she joins other ranchers and officials in the northern states who have started keeping an eye out for the invasive species at the Canadian border.

Wild pigs are a hybridized species, a mix of domestic swine and wild boar brought over from Europe in the 1980s and 1990s to diversify agricultur­e meat production.

The pigs were introduced to the landscape as they either escaped or were released into the wild en masse by farmers.

The resulting animal has managed to adapt and thrive, able to give birth to litters of six twice a year.

A University of Saskatchew­an survey released in May said the spread of wild pigs in Canada, and especially in Saskatchew­an, has been exponentia­l since their introducti­on in 1990, expanding by an average of 88,000 square kilometres per year over the last decade — 58 per cent of the expansion between then and 2017 has been in the province.

In Montana, growing concerns about the spread of wild pigs from Alberta and Saskatchew­an led to the state’s Invasive Species Council launching the Squeal on Pigs program last month.

The program encourages residents to report pig sightings to the Department of Livestock in the hopes of keeping them out.

University of Saskatchew­an researcher Ryan Brook hopes that the action the U.S. is taking will nudge Saskatchew­an in the right direction when it comes to creating a comprehens­ive wild pig strategy.

The province needs to recognize the rate at which they’re spreading, decide whether it wants to try to manage or eradicate them and take action, he said.

Saskatchew­an manages some native wildlife through sport hunting licenses, but sport hunting them isn’t a feasible option, Brook said, as unless the entire sounder group is killed, the species’ reproducti­ve rates are so high that killing only a few won’t make a dent.

Those group sizes have increased dramatical­ly since 2010, from four to six animals to upwards of 24, and breaking them up only serves to disperse the population further.

But despite their numbers, the animals can be extremely hard to find as they hide in dense cover and largely come out at night.

Robert Freburg, president of the Saskatoon Wildlife Federation, said that’s what he’s been hearing from hunters and trappers in the federation’s 2,500-strong members.

“They’re just not seeing the hogs when they’re out hunting,” Freburg said. “I definitely think they’re there, but they’re very elusive animals and don’t seem to be easily hunted, even by some diehards that are out in the bush all the time hunting or trapping.”

Nutter’s concern as a rancher stems from the pigs being vehicles for disease and the damage they can do to crops and water systems.

“When they test your cattle, they can’t tell pig brucellosi­s apart from bovine brucellosi­s right away. They could quarantine my whole herd because they test positive,” she said. “And in our part of Montana, water is really limited. So if the pigs get into our springs they could render a lot of grazing lands useless.”

Brook said if the pigs’ growth continues largely unfettered, they could come to outnumber people in Saskatchew­an. By the end of 2020, his team estimates they ’ll occupy one million sq. km in Canada.

“Many people have asked me (if we) can we eradicate wild pigs in Saskatchew­an,” he said. “My answer is, ‘I don’t know, we’ve never tried.’”

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