Canada's efforts to control wild boars have failed!
Brooke, an expert on wild boar issues, said:Super pigs are breeding so fast in Canada that even if 65% of them are killed every year, their numbers will not decrease, and their living space will continue to expand!
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Researchers recorded more than 62,000 wild boar sightings.One of them appeared just 18 miles from Minnesota, USA.
This means that super pigs are migrating towards the northern United States.
The United States itself is a country infested with wild boars, with a total of 6.9 million wild boars in the entire country.
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These pigs destroy crops, prey on native species, and spread diseases. The wild boar problem causes the United States to suffer more than $2.5 billion in economic losses each year. It can be said that the Americans are already in a state of desperation!
With great difficulty, through various means, wild boars have been controlled in the southern region, and there are still no wild boars in most areas of the north.
Now, there’s a new threat to the north too—the Canadian super pig, a breed that’s larger and more hardy than the American wild boar!
Why are there so many super pigs that are still out of control after 65% of them are killed every year?
There are three main types of wild boars that are rampant in the wild in North America:Feral domestic pigs, true wild boars (Eurasian wild boars), and the hybrid offspring of the two!
There were no pigs in North America originally; they were introduced later by humans.
Domestic pigs were first introduced to America in the 16th century and raised as food.
In the 19th century, in order to meet hunting needs, pure wild Eurasian wild boars were introduced to North America.
The wild boars would be kept in fenced reserves for hunting by the wealthy.
At the beginning, the situation was well controlled and there was no trouble. But over time, wild boars escaped.
Everyone knows what happened next. The wild boar met an escaped domestic pig and fell in love. There was no reproductive isolation between the two pigs, so a hybrid pig was born.
This is why there is an infestation of wild boars in the United States today.
Hybrid pigs combine many advantages of domestic pigs and wild boars. They are larger and more fertile than domestic pigs. At the same time, they inherit the wild boars' disease resistance and ability to survive in the wild. As soon as they appear, they immediately occupy a high ecological niche and are extremely destructive. They are considered the most aggressive animals on earth.
Wild Boar Bulldozer
Because they are better than their parents, hybrid pigs are also called “super pigs” and can be found in the United States.
The only difference is,Canada's Super Pig is stronger than America's Super Pig because humans participated in the design of Canada's Super Pig.
Canada began importing wild boars from Europe later than the United States, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
At that time, Canada encouraged farmers to raise pigs and encouraged them to crossbreed wild boars and domestic pigs to breed more cost-effective meat pigs.
By 2001, due to the sluggish pork market, many pig farmers had no choice but to cut their losses and release their pigs into the wild in retaliation.
At the time, people believed that the pigs would not be able to survive Canada's cold winters and would eventually freeze to death.
Unexpectedly, these pigs were very smart. They learned to dig holes in the snow and lay cattails to keep warm.
The hybrid advantages of the super pigs themselves, coupled with the intervention of human selective breeding, have resulted in Canadian super pigs being larger and more cold-resistant than American super pigs.
The average size is 120-250 pounds. The average weight of an adult super pig in Canada is 500 pounds, and some have reached over 661 pounds, almost 300 kilograms, which is twice the largest wild boar data collected in multiple regions of the United States in 2022.
In short, there were almost no wild boars in Canada before 2002. Relying on their own advantages, super pigs quickly spread throughout Canada in just 10 years.
Some scientists believe that Canada acted too late, which led to the wild boars getting out of control.
Four states will be occupied by Canadian super pigs first. How should the United States respond?
Recently, researchers studied the GPS data of Canada's super pigs and mapped their expansion routes.The first four states where these pigs invaded the United States were North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Minnesota.
The study was published in the journal Biological Invasions. Canadian biologist Brook said: “The United States may not be able to prevent the invasion of northern super pigs because these pigs are extremely intelligent and more cold-resistant.”
There are currently 6.9 million wild boars in the United States, a larger population than in Canada, with most concentrated in the South.
In the Americans' own words, it is impossible to eliminate wild boars, and they can only try their best to control them.
Their main method of control is hunting and trapping, and they encourage both professionals and amateurs to participate.
Lifting fence works best
This method is very consistent with local customs. They pay attention to animal welfare but prefer hunting.
In particular, wild boars have been identified as “pests”, and many areas in the United States have relaxed their hunting policies. There are no designated hunting times, and wild boars can be hunted anytime and anywhere.
Wild hogs are the most popular big game animal in North America after white-tailed deer, and in 2019, hunters killed 31,508 hogs while pursuing deer in South Carolina alone.
Wild boars are very smart. In order to avoid hunters, they start to move at night. For this reason, hunters spend money to buy night vision goggles and thermal imaging equipment.
Some wild boars no longer enter traditional fences to eat.
In Texas, wild boar hunting is a business. It is allowed to shoot wild boars from the air by helicopter. You only need to pay $1,000 to experience it for one hour. The efficiency is also very high. You can kill 9-27 wild boars in one hour.
However, even though Americans hunt wild boars at an astonishing rate, they are still not faster than the wild boars' reproductive capacity.
Not only is the number not decreasing, it is also steadily increasing, with a tendency to gradually expand northwards.
Canadian super pigs have invaded the northern United States. In fact, the biggest problem is not their size. There are not so many large super pigs in the United States, but there are also cases of capturing wild boars weighing 800 pounds or even 1,000 pounds.
The main reason is that Canadian super pigs have strong resistance to cold. Once they invade and occupy the relatively cold areas in the north, it means that the last piece of “pure land” in the United States will disappear.
at last
It has to be admitted that no matter what American experts are, they are helpless when faced with wild boars.
The wild boar is a strong animal. It is not picky about food, has strong reproductive capacity and high combat effectiveness. The key is that it is so smart that it can come up with a countermeasure to any effective hunting method as long as it is used for a period of time.
Just like hunters used to hunt during the day, wild boars later switched to being active at night.
Fence traps are currently considered the most effective method, but if just one wild boar escapes, it will not enter the trap again next time, and the other pigs will quickly learn the lesson.
Some hunters have reported that some wild boars are no longer interested in traditional fence traps. Having seen structures like fences many times, the pigs have become wary. However, the lifting fence traps are still effective because the fences are lowered in mid-air by remote control and are not easily seen by wild boars.
For this reason, many regions have had to set up professional wild boar intervention and control teams to learn and master the latest and most scientific methods to reduce the number of wild boars. However, a lot of money has been invested, but the results are not good!