““As far as Canada goes, I couldn’t imagine a worse animal being released into the environment. It eats crops, destroys fences, can attack and harass livestock, destroy water quality, eat almost anything and carry disease,” said Brook.” #WildPigs#Alberta#Saskatchewan#Canada
Wild ‘super pigs’ from Canada could become a new front in the war on feral hogs
“However, they likely do their most severe damage through predation. Wild pigs kill and eat rodents, deer, birds, snakes, frogs, lizards and salamanders. This probably best explains why colleagues and I found in one study that forest patches with wild pigs had 26% fewer mammal and bird species than similar forest patches without pigs.”
Last week, the #Canadian Wild Pig #Research Project published a map image on its social media page showing locations of wild pig sightings, along with the question: “What is the risk of wild pigs to the mountain parks in #Alberta and #BritishColumbia?”
Release most domestic animals in a forest and they will be gone within the year. Cows? Eaten. Chickens? Extra Eaten. But not pigs. Pigs revert — they survive and each generation is more close to some lost wild boar ideal form than the next. Why are pigs different? Are they less domesticated? Is it the omnivory? Is it their intelligence?
In a few decades people say they need power weapons to protect their families from the pigs. What the heck?
@futurebird we have wild #pigs, here in northern #California. They are stealthy, fierce, have thick, coarse, black hair, tusks, will kill you, chase you, play tricks on you, and are so successful that the state and its agencies are locked in a struggle with them over proliferation. They are the descendants of domestic pigs introduced by 18th century Spanish settlers. In ~300 years they've transformed from pink and tractable to fierce and dominant.