Wild pigs not spreading from Manitoba

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This article was published 14/02/2024 (654 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No, wild pigs from Manitoba are not invading surrounding jurisdictions, but they are a threat that’s being managed, say various organizations working to track and remove them.

There have been news reports in recent months claiming wild boar from Manitoba are on the move and at risk of wreaking havoc on agriculture across borders. But organizations in Manitoba, Ontario and North Dakota aren’t seeing those migration patterns, though they are increasing their use of technology and other techniques to keep an eye on the invasive species.

“We’re seeing large males and reports of them kind of moving around, but for the most part, a lot of our sightings that we have still seem to be areas that had wild boar farms maybe 10 years or 15 years ago,” said Devon Baete, manager of field operations for Squeal on Pigs Manitoba.

Wild boar are considered a threat to rural Manitoba because they uproot and trample crops. They also contaminate water sources, can carry up to 89 diseases and damage natural habitats, which displace other wildlife.

The organization has about 90 trail cameras set up in regions around the province and relies on sighting tips from the public and landowners to find wild pigs and collect data on the size of groups of swine and their movements. The organization also recently received a thermal drone to fly over areas that can’t be accessed by vehicles to determine if pigs are in that area.

“If it’s just one pig, we will work with the landowner or work with hunters and just see what they can do to remove them,” Baete said. “Otherwise, typically, there’s multiple pigs and then we set up the trap.”

Most of the trapping takes place around April to June and Baete said the organization uses large and round corral traps and a newer type of trap, which looks like a circular volleyball net that pigs push underneath to get inside it. Once they’re inside, they can’t figure out a way back out, Baete said.

The pigs are lured in by an irresistible mix of fermented corn, cheese and a sprinkle of strawberry Jell-O. Warm water is added to the mixture and then it is left to sit for three days.

“It stinks horribly — it’s almost like a bread smell with yeast and stuff,” Baete said. “And the pigs really like it. But at the same time, deer, elk and ungulates don’t like it.”

Natasha Fafard, who also works with Squeal on Pigs, said the pigs like soil in the Spruce Woods area because it is easy for them to dig through.

“There definitely is an established population in Spruce Woods,” she said. “Aside from that, unless we do some more monitoring, which we’re trying to do, it’s hard to determine where these pigs are and where they’re being established.”

Late last month, though, Baete said he received a new report of wild pigs near Brandon.

Though the sighting hasn’t been confirmed yet, the organization is looking for more information from the public.

While there has been talk of “super pigs,” Baete said the pigs the organization is interested in removing are Eurasian wild boars, which were brought over to Canada in the ’80s and ’90s and introduced as a farming practice.

“Then they were crossed with some more domestic breeds,” he said. “But I mean, not that that makes them any more super.”

The market for wild boar collapsed in the early 2000s and many wild pigs were released.

The wild pigs have a heavier coat of fur, a heavy front neck, a long nose used to dig and root, and are more adapted to survive winters.

Ryan Powers, district supervisor for USDA-APHIS Wildlife Services, agrees that the name “super pigs” is misleading.

“One thing to point out is there’s truly nothing, no such animal called a super pig,” he said. “And from my perspective, it’s a little bit of a misnomer.”

But however others refer to the pigs, Powers said North Dakota has been determined to ensure that populations of wild pigs do not become established in the state, given that there are significant numbers of wild pigs in the southern U.S.

“Currently in North Dakota, we’re not aware of any established populations,” Powers said, adding that site visits are conducted when sightings are reported.

Powers also said the agency will be getting a fixed-wing aircraft that will be outfitted with a thermal camera to expand their monitoring efforts.

“For a number of years, we always thought that our threat about feral swine moving northward would have been coming from the south,” he said. “But we’re just as concerned here currently about pigs coming out of Canada.”

Meanwhile, the province of Ontario has made it illegal to import, possess, transport, propagate, buy, sell, lease or trade live wild boar as of Jan. 1.

Brook Schryer, who runs the wild pig surveillance program, is the assistant co-ordinator with the invasive species awareness program run by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters.

“There are no established populations of wild pigs currently in Ontario,” Schryer said, adding that most recent detections of pigs have been the domesticated farm varieties that have escaped their enclosures.

In 2021, however, a dozen wild pigs were captured and euthanized in Pickering, Ont.

“These pigs that are in Ontario right now, if they are in Ontario, it’s because they were released from a farm, most likely, and it is not a population that has spread from Manitoba or Minnesota — we’re not seeing that as of yet,” he said. “We’re hoping that we don’t see that.”

The organization also uses sighting tips it receives from the public and they also have camera set up in different regions of the province, recently expanding to 50 cameras in Northwestern Ontario. Unlike Manitoba, hunting wild pigs in Ontario is prohibited. When wild pig populations are hunted, Schryer said, they scatter and then the population ends up spreading more quickly.

He emphasized the importance of preventive efforts like monitoring and encouraging people to report sightings, in addition to the Ontario government’s recent legislation.

“There’s a reason why we’re afraid of wild pigs, the reason being is because they’re so disruptive,” he said. “They are hyper intelligent, and they would cause huge damage to our environments, to our agriculture, to our economies and human safety.”

Back in Manitoba, Fafard also agrees that the solution to wild pigs is not hunting individual animals.

She told the Sun that wild pigs not only pose a threat to the native berries and traditional medicines harvested by Indigenous people, but they also threaten their traditional game species.

“Wild pigs pose a threat to the Métis traditional foods through the destruction of natural ecosystem,” said Fafard, who is a Métis hunter.

She said she wants to ensure wild pigs don’t threaten the white-tailed deer population, which her family has hunted for generations, by spreading disease and consuming deer’s food sources.

“The deer have been here for how long, and the boar just moved in and can breed really fast. They destroy the land and the damage is quite a bit worse than what a deer can do,” she said. “They’re not meant to be here and they’re quite a bit more aggressive to try to control rather than a deer.”

Sightings or evidence of wild pigs can be reported to Squeal on Pigs’ tipline at 1-833-SPOT-PIG.

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