Front Burner - Canadian ‘super pigs’ are a problem

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

They devour farmers’ crops, breed rapidly and can tunnel beneath the snow to survive: feral pigs have taken residence on the Canadian prairies and are wreaking destruction. Today, Megan Evans, the Executive Director of the Alberta Invasive Species Council, takes us through why the surge in swine is so serious, and why efforts to eradicate them have been so unsuccessful. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Happy Holidays! I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic. I'd like you to set a goal to drive key learning for your people in 2025. I want you to connect with Humber CPL to design a custom training solution that accelerates your team's performance and engagement. Humber works with you to hone industry-specific upskilling, enhance your leadership, and drive results. Flexible learning delivery formats are tailored to your unique needs. Adapt, evolve, and excel. To learn more, go to humber.ca slash cpl. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Stephanie Skanderis, sitting in for Jamie Poisson. An invasive pest is making its way through Alberta.

Wild pigs are on the prowl, but it is no joke. Wildlife experts don't see Canadian bacon. They see a pig not native to North America. The science is very clear that we're on a trajectory of major crisis. Canada has a super pigs problem. These feral hogs are a prolific invasive species. They're destructive, hard to track, and smart. Cities like Winnipeg are working on plans to deal with the chance these beasts start showing up downtown. And it looks like we are exporting the problem to the U.S. The United States is bracing for the arrival of so-called super pigs.

The scientist leading the wild pig research project said the wild pigs have probably crossed over into North Dakota already. Pigs are encroaching from Canada, and they've been seen as close as five miles on the Saskatchewan side of the border. Now, the biggest risk of introduction to Montana is swine crossing the border. Reports can be directed to the squeal on the pig's hotline. Invasive hogs aren't new to Americans. The country spends more than 2.1 billion dollars a year trying to control a population that's estimated to be in the millions. However, scientists say it's going to take a coordinated effort

to stop them from becoming a full-on crisis on both sides of the border. Megan Evans is here today. She's the executive director of the Alberta Invasive Species Council. She's going to take us through what a swine surge could mean. Hey Megan, great to have you here. Thanks for joining FrontBrunner. Hi, thanks for having me. So I want to start with where Canada's feral pigs come from, because they do have an origin story, and it starts in the 80s and 90s, right?

What happened that brought us here today? That's right. So, you know, it's interesting. A lot of people, when you think about wild boar, feral pigs, you think about what's happening way down in the southern states in places like Texas, right? Texas Cooperative Wildlife Services estimates there are 2.6 million feral hogs in our state, and that's a conservative number. That's essentially the population of the city of Houston.

The feral pig explosion now infests every county in Texas. Well, that was a separate introduction. So wild boar were introduced to Texas in the early 1900s for sport hunting. We introduced them at a very different time in the 80s and 90s. And in fact, a lot of farmers were encouraged to start farming them in an effort to diversify agricultural industries. The animals were raised commercially in Canada until about 20 years ago when the market for their meat dropped out. Some pigs escaped, others were set free, and now wild boars roam around 620,000 acres of Canadian prairie.

And that's essentially the introduction into Canada. So we encouraged it, like it was supposed to be a good thing, right? Yeah, like we, I think a lot of folks were pushing it because they thought there would be huge demand for this meat. They were arguing, you know, these animals, they can't survive our winters, it's too harsh. That turned out to not be the case, though. And then I think, from what I understand, we took it one step further. People started breeding European wild boar with domestic hogs for farming purposes, creating the super pig. What is it about this hybrid that makes them so super? I think it's important to note that all of the

domestic pigs that we have, if you go way, way, way, way back, they're all essentially originated from wild boar, right? We domesticated pigs eons ago. But when the wild boar were brought back to Canada in the 80s and 90s, we bred them again with domestic hogs. The idea was that these pigs would be for meat production. So we wanted them to have lots of babies and to be big and to have all of those qualities of livestock species. But they generally more closely resemble wild boar. So they're big and they're dark colored. The babies have stripes. Now the term super pigs, we don't typically use that term, but it is a term that does get used fairly often. I mean, why not? It sounds great.

It's catchy. I'll give you that. The term I prefer to use is like, you know, an ideal invasive species. If there was an ideal invasive species, these wild boar are it. And that's because they have all of the characteristics of an invasive species, right? Smart, they have fast growth, they can start reproducing at a very early age, you know, depending on the environment. If the conditions are ideal, they can start reproducing as early as six months, they can have an average of about six piglets per litter, and they can almost have not quite but almost have three litter per year. So that is tremendous population growth. They have no real predators and they're generalist feeders, so they will eat almost anything. So there's really nothing stopping them in our environment. There's no natural stresses or pressures that are going to help to constrain their populations, which allows them to grow unchecked. So ideal invasive species is the term that we go with.

But you mentioned that it's easy for them to reproduce. If these pigs are everywhere and they can reproduce so quickly, why are they so hard to find? Yeah, well, pigs are kind of notoriously smart. They're very intelligent animals. They also are smart enough to know that it's in their best interest to avoid being around humans, right? So they'll go nocturnal. That's a really great way to avoid, you know, kind of being observed by humans as if you just are only active at night. They can also disperse over really large distances really, really quickly. And we've even seen, you know, videos coming in. This one video in particular that comes to mind, it's a farm in Saskatchewan and there's a farmer, he's harvesting his crop. He's in his harvester

and there's just a narrow little strip of crop left, just the tiniest little harvesting his crop. He's in his harvester and there's just a narrow little strip of crop left, just the tiniest little piece of crop. And as he approaches it with the harvester for one last pass, out shoots about 40 wild boar from this tiny little piece of crop. They just stayed their ground. They hid. You would not have known that they were there. Then those animals just sprinted down into the river valley and they were gone. Look, from everything you're describing, and I've also heard these feral pigs being called wild boar at large. So that plus how you're describing them being so elusive. To me, they're starting to sound like pig al Capones or something, you know, like skulking around Moose Jaw. Like this sounds funny to me, but this is actually a really serious and urgent problem, right? Why?

Well, I would argue all invasive species are a very serious and urgent problem. Invasive species are considered to be the second biggest threat to biodiversity only after habitat loss. But with wild boar particularly, they're a major problem in crops. So they'll get into crop fields or native rangelands or golf courses. And what they do is they turn over the vegetation. And they're doing that in search of tubers and grubs for food. They'll get into riparian areas, so in and around water. And they do that to cool off.

But in so doing, they destroy really sensitive riparian vegetation. They contaminate the water body. They defecate and urinate in it. And there's all kinds of problems with contamination. They'll get into stored livestock feed. They'll predate young livestock and wildlife. So there's photos floating around wild boar with like a baby deer in its mouth, right? So they pose risk to our native wildlife species, grassland, nesting birds,

but the major, major risk associated with these animals is the risk of disease spread. So wild boar can carry up to 89 different diseases. And some of those are what we call reportable diseases like African swine fever or foot and mouth disease. African swine fever impacts of course swine and pigs. A reportable disease outbreak like African swine fever would cause a complete closure of Alberta's pork exports and that could lead to a Canadian closure and it's a problem if an outbreak occurs on a farm or a confined facility but it could be controlled using culling and biosecurity measures. However, if that was a disease outbreak that got into this feral population of wild boar, I mean, we don't know how we would ever get a handle on it, right?

So a major, major risk to Alberta's beef and pork industries. But if this has been an issue for decades, why are we talking about it now? Like how bad has this feral hog situation become in Alberta and Saskatchewan today? Well, you know, so there's been sources of wild boar from farms since the 80s and 90s. So they've been escaping or have been released from those farms since then. When you factor that in and you start looking at the population, the reproductive capacity of these in and you start looking at the population, the reproductive capacity of these, we could be looking at exponential population growth if we let it happen and if the environmental conditions are right. We can't speak to numbers

though, but there is a researcher that just started up at the University of Calgary and he's going to start looking into some of those questions. So hopefully we'll have more informed answers to be able to speak to that in the future. Yeah, we might be able to get some of those concrete numbers because it is kind of hard to wrap your head around right now. It's tricky because these animals are super elusive, so you don't see them. A lot of the times the damage, if a farmer or producer is experiencing damage from wild boar, they might not recognize it as damage from wild boar. They might think, oh, the deer or the elk are into my feed again, right? Megan, do you know what? All I can think of is the piggoons from Margaret Atwood's Mad Adam trilogy. I don't know if you know what I'm

talking about. It's this transgenic pig creation that's really smart and also dangerous. And she describes them as crafty and wicked and everyone is always constantly fighting them off. Like, is that where we're headed here? Is that what these pigs are capable of? What I want to know is, has Margaret Atwood predicted our next dystopian future and is it going to involve these feral pigs? Wow, that's profound, first of all. So right now we're on a bad trajectory, but we have an opportunity to change that. And Alberta, we take our invasive species very seriously. I'm sure many of you know that Alberta is the largest rat free jurisdiction in the world. And we're very proud of that.

We were the first province to implement a control program. So there's technicians that track groups of females, which are called sounders. And they set up these very, very robust corral traps. And they wait for all the pigs to go inside and then they close the door. So we do need more resources for it to be effective. And I think more so than anything, we really need a national strategy to address the issue because the pigs don't care about jurisdictional boundaries or boundaries between provinces. And so we all need to work together and be on the same page

and employing similar management strategies. Happy holidays. I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic. And I'd like you to set a goal for 2025 to sharpen your skills and get promoted. Register for a professional designation, micro-credential, or certificate with Humber's Continuous Professional Learning and ignite your career journey this new year. Our experts deliver accelerated learning from resilience-based leadership to electric vehicle fundamentals and learning options that work with your ambitious lifestyle. Adapt, evolve, and excel. Go to humber.ca slash cpl to get started. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about

money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups.

This feral pig issue has absolutely exploded in the U.S. There are millions of feral pigs there across 40 states, and they're in suburban parts of places like Houston. So these are not the super pigs, right? These are feral pigs that are not the super pigs that we've seen in Canada. But based on what we're seeing in the US, what could happen in Canada? Like what's our worst case scenario here? Well, I guess the worst case scenario would be a Texas-like situation. So Texas is ground zero for feral pigs while boar in the States. this is ground zero for feral pigs wild boar in in the states the way i look at that as a biologist the pigs have saturated their ideal habitat in the agricultural areas in the rural areas and so they're kind of forced into the urban areas at least that's what i would assume so they're they don't want to be in cities um i can't imagine like they avoid humans very well and they that's

the preference so until such a time that their their ideal habitats in those agricultural areas are are really kind of saturated we probably won't be seeing them in urban areas so in invasive species management you know there's this thing called the invasion curve and it's just you know you plot time and then you know the species abundance over time after it's introduced well we're early on in that invasion curve. In Texas, they're at the very far end. The pigs are everywhere where they can be, everywhere that they can inhabit, and they're out-competing native species. They're causing tremendous amounts of damage. So they're taking different management action, which is appropriate because they're at a different stage of invasion than we are. So I would say that's our worst case

scenario, but we have an opportunity to change that and to not get there. But the U.S. has tried a lot to get rid of them. They've spent $2 billion. They've tried all these different tactics. One of them that they considered is poisoning the pigs with toxins. Sid Miller is the Texas Agriculture Commissioner. As a way to help farmers and ranchers fight back against the destructive hogs, he's approved an emergency rule change allowing the use of a pesticide on pigs, the same pesticide used to kill mice and rats. But then that became an issue in so many other ways.

Like they had to get the pigs to eat the poison without hurting other animals too. And then in Georgia, dogs were trained to hunt the pigs, but the pigs learned that if they ran long enough, the dogs would just get tired and give up. It turns out that some people find hunting the pigs fun. Like there are tons of YouTube videos of people going after these feral pigs like a video game, so much so that this has actually become a whole industry. And there's now a situation where they need to keep some of the pigs so people can hunt them for fun does that mean they may never get rid of them entirely well the hunting question

is tricky because a lot of hunters are really keen to hunt them and we never want to create a demand for an invasive species that is like rule number one an invasive species manager do not create any kind of demand for this invasive species or you risk not ever being able to eradicate it because there's no public will. There's no political will there to make that happen. I think with regard to hunting, what I would say to the hunting community, and this resonates with so many hunters that we've already talked to, is that these animals were never supposed to be here and they pose a major risk to our wildlife species and the traditional species that hunters currently hunt, right? So they pose risk to the native ecosystems, the plants, the water and all of the wildlife species as well.

So the wild boar, they're not supposed to be here. They might be fun to hunt. They're hard to hunt. But ultimately, they come with a major risk to those traditional hunting resources. Ultimately, they come with a major risk to those traditional hunting resources. Moving back to the situation in Canada, as we're trying to get rid of these pigs and we're looking at the solutions, is there an issue of animal cruelty here? Obviously, not everyone agrees with efforts to eradicate invasive species. So how do you respond to those concerns? Yeah, you know, I would say

the animals that are trapped through the provincial control program are humanely euthanized, and they're euthanized as humanely as possible. Again, these are animals that were never supposed to be here. So, you know, I understand that there's some people that don't agree with that practice. But with regard to all of our native wildlife species that these animals, again, pose risk to, the native ecosystems, grassland nesting birds, these pigs devastate grassland nesting birds and habitat and nests. And so this is something that land managers, as invasive species managers, we need these animals removed from the landscape. And that's the course of action that we encourage to take. And why isn't there another way around that? Why can't we use them for food or something like that?

Put them to use? Well, you know, yeah, using them for food. That's a that is a good point and a good question. It comes back again to not creating any type of demand for an invasive species. So the meat is not utilized. It's also uninspected meat and pigs can host all kinds of diseases. So there's, you know, a little bit of risk there. You know, if we were to like, you know, have the meat inspected and then butchered and sent to food banks or that sort of thing, and then we turn

around and we are successful in eradicating them and people and food banks have come to rely on that source of protein. We don't want there to again, be the will to bring these animals back. So I think there is valid criticism there that that's wasteful and that's fair. That's a fair criticism. But again, there's a meaning and a reason behind that. And it is so that we don't create that demand. So how well do you think the provinces have gone about tackling this problem? There was a program, a boar hunting program in Alberta that it's ending this month, but not a single feral pig was reported killed. So how are we going about this issue here in Canada? Well, big time, we need that national strategy. And there are steps being taken to develop a national strategy to address the

issue of feral pigs or wild boar at large. So that is currently in the works. So there's good things happening, but we need a national strategy. We need all the provinces to come to the table to be on the same page. The epicenter of wild boar in Canada is the Canadian prairies. And within that, our understanding is that the majority of wild boar is in Saskatchewan. But I think, you know, to take a step back from that with regard to invasive species, which are such a huge issue, and again, a major, major risk to our economy and our environment, we need to invest more in prevention. We need to prevent invasive species from establishing in the first place. Obviously, with wild boar, that was an intentional introduction.

But there's so many other things like invasive plant species or weeds are often dismissed as trivial or irrelevant, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The majority of costs that we're currently experiencing due to invasive species in Alberta are attributed to agricultural losses due to invasive plants, let alone the biodiversity loss from invasive plant encroachment into natural systems. So prevention, prevention, prevention, and then also monitoring for an early detection and rapid response. In case in point is the fact that you look at Texas, they're so far along in the invasion curve and it's gone. They've lost the battle. We need to fight winnable battles. We need to focus on prevention and we need to take

invasive species more seriously. Well, yeah. Is that a cautionary tale for us? Do you think we could make the same mistakes that were potentially made down South? Yeah. I would argue we've already made the same mistake by introducing them right off the bat. Yeah. And yeah, so we've already done that. But yeah, 100%, we need to learn from what's already happened in other jurisdictions. We've so much to learn. I think the other thing is, too, there's a real call to action here for the public. And that is, you know, to squeal on pigs, which is our campaign, which is focused on raising awareness. But that is a call to action for the public. And that is to learn the signs of wild boars. So learn what their tracks look like, learn what the

signs of damage, and then report. If you don't know who to report it to, reach out. There are invasive species councils all across Canada, or any government agency, I'm sure, would love to hear that report. So a major call to action here for the general public to learn the signs and squeal on pigs. Megan, I did not know I would be so fascinated by feral pigs, but I am. And here we are. And thank you so much for telling us all about this. Thank you. That's all for today. FrontBurner was produced this week by Lauren Donnelly, Shannon Higgins, Derek Vanderwyk, Matthew Amha, Jodi Martinson, and Simi Bassi. Our sound design was by Sam McNulty.

Our intern is Abby Hughes. Our music is by Joseph Chabison. Our executive producer is Nick McKay-Blocos. And our hosts this week were Jamie Poisson and me, Stephanie Skanderis. Finally, a big congratulations to FrontBurner sound designer, Mac Cameron, who's now a dad to adorable baby, Alistair. We hope you're enjoying the time together. Thank you for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.