Saskatchewan experts urge action as invasive wild pigs run rampant in province

While the idea of wild boars escaping farms and taking over sounds like some sort of joke, it’s exactly what’s been happening in Saskatchewan for the last few decades.

Ray Orb, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM), says the issues it’s created are no laughing matter.

“They destroy cropland, they get into grain crops,” Orb said. “But they also get into pasture land so they can get into native forage. They can do a lot of damage in a short period of time. It’s just the nature of those animals that they can do that.”

Orb says it also poses a risk to domestic pigs which can contract disease from the invasive species.

It’s a problem Canadian Wild Pig Research Project Director Ryan Brook says is long past solving.

“Twenty-five years ago, I think if those farms would have been controlled and there had been a small to moderate effort to recapture or remove free ranging pigs, I think we could have gotten ahead of this,” Brook explained.

“Here in 2022 however, eradication in Saskatchewan is off the table.”

Brook hopes to see more population control measures put in place before the inevitable happens.

“We’re certainly well on track to have more wild pigs than people in Saskatchewan,” he said Thursday.

Currently, Brook is pushing for the use of “Judas pigs” to help locate more of the population.

The technique involves capturing one pig, releasing it with a tracker and using its movements to find the rest of the groupings.

Brook says trapping and monitoring is key since hunting is one major cause of the geographical spread.

“They can break up a group,” Brook explained. “So you have a group of 12 (and) you shoot several of them, the survivors spread around the landscape: go to another municipality or two over, and start up in new areas.”

SARM is focused on putting pressure on the government and regulators to shut down wild pig farms.

“What we are asking is that no more hog farms that are raising wild boars domestically are allowed to exist in Saskatchewan,” Orb said.

Wild pigs can have two litters per year of around six piglets each, and travel hundreds of kilometres per season, which these officials say means Saskatchewan — and perhaps even more prairie provinces — are in trouble if measures are not taken soon to control the invasive species.