Feb 23, 2023 11:26 PM
A new breed of massive, cold-weather-proof hog is venturing south
https://gizmodo.com/super-pigs-moving-so...1850145983
EXCERPTS: . . While pigs are not native to North America, they’ve been here for quite a while: The first documented pigs arrived in the States in 1539 on a boat that landed in Florida. The population of wild pigs has exploded over the past two decades...
[...] "Wild hogs feed on anything,” Ryan Brook, who leads the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, told Field & Stream last month. “They gobble up tons and tons of goslings and ducklings in the spring. They can take down a whitetail deer, even an adult. Originally, it was like ‘wow, this is something we can hunt.’ But it’s become clear that they’re threatening our whitetail deer, elk, and especially, waterfowl. Not to mention the crop damage. The downsides outweigh any benefit wild hogs may have as a huntable species.”
The presence of too many pigs worldwide is also wreaking havoc on the climate. [...] Hogs can also spread diseases that can infect humans, including E. coli, salmonella, and hepatitis.
The U.S.’s pig problem might be old, but our neighbors to the north have less experience with managing these wild hogs. [...] Once they arrived in Canada, farmers crossbred these boars with domestic pigs. When the market for boar meat dried up in Canada in the early 2000s, some of these new big pigs roamed free or escaped from their enclosures. Pigs have an impressive breeding rate...
[...] The pigs are working with a new superpower, helped along by that crossbreeding: They’re bigger than their ancestors. People have seen pigs as big as 661 pounds (300 kilograms) in the wild, according to the Guardian...
[...] “All the experts said at that time: ‘Well, no worries. If a wild pig or a wild boar ever escaped from a farm, there’s no way it would survive a western Canadian winter. It would just freeze to death,’” Brook told the Guardian earlier this week. “Well, it turns out that being big is a huge advantage to surviving in the cold.”
The Canadian super pigs are migrating south at the exact wrong time. The U.S. has been struggling for years with controlling its pig population, and new super pigs coming down from the north could only strengthen the numbers of pigs in the wild... (MORE - missing details)
https://gizmodo.com/super-pigs-moving-so...1850145983
EXCERPTS: . . While pigs are not native to North America, they’ve been here for quite a while: The first documented pigs arrived in the States in 1539 on a boat that landed in Florida. The population of wild pigs has exploded over the past two decades...
[...] "Wild hogs feed on anything,” Ryan Brook, who leads the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, told Field & Stream last month. “They gobble up tons and tons of goslings and ducklings in the spring. They can take down a whitetail deer, even an adult. Originally, it was like ‘wow, this is something we can hunt.’ But it’s become clear that they’re threatening our whitetail deer, elk, and especially, waterfowl. Not to mention the crop damage. The downsides outweigh any benefit wild hogs may have as a huntable species.”
The presence of too many pigs worldwide is also wreaking havoc on the climate. [...] Hogs can also spread diseases that can infect humans, including E. coli, salmonella, and hepatitis.
The U.S.’s pig problem might be old, but our neighbors to the north have less experience with managing these wild hogs. [...] Once they arrived in Canada, farmers crossbred these boars with domestic pigs. When the market for boar meat dried up in Canada in the early 2000s, some of these new big pigs roamed free or escaped from their enclosures. Pigs have an impressive breeding rate...
[...] The pigs are working with a new superpower, helped along by that crossbreeding: They’re bigger than their ancestors. People have seen pigs as big as 661 pounds (300 kilograms) in the wild, according to the Guardian...
[...] “All the experts said at that time: ‘Well, no worries. If a wild pig or a wild boar ever escaped from a farm, there’s no way it would survive a western Canadian winter. It would just freeze to death,’” Brook told the Guardian earlier this week. “Well, it turns out that being big is a huge advantage to surviving in the cold.”
The Canadian super pigs are migrating south at the exact wrong time. The U.S. has been struggling for years with controlling its pig population, and new super pigs coming down from the north could only strengthen the numbers of pigs in the wild... (MORE - missing details)