Canada is supposed to be the harmless neighbor to the north.
Now there’s trouble brewing there, the likes of which no one has seen before.
And a scary threat is coming from Canada to create this nightmare scenario in the U.S.
Wild super pigs poised to spill across the border from Canada
Canada has a serious problem with wild pigs that are set to come across the border into the United States.
Wild pigs are known for rampaging across the south, causing billions of dollars worth of destruction by destroying crops, infrastructure, and water supplies.
Now they could become a huge problem for the states near Canada.
A study published in an academic journal found that Canadian wild “super pigs” have a “high potential” to cross the border into North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Minnesota.
University of Saskatchewan professor Ryan Brook – a co-author of the study – said Canadian farmers brought wild pigs to the country in the 1980s and 90s.
Some of those were bred with domestic swine to create a hybrid Brook calls the “super pig.”
These super pigs can survive the harsh winters of Canada and the Northern United States.
Canadian farmers released pigs into the wild in the early 2000s after the market for them collapsed.
That led to an exploding wild pig population north of the border.
“In 2010, we started to map these free-ranging wild pigs in Canada. We documented an exponential and completely out of control spread of them,” Brook told Field & Stream. “Then, the next obvious question was: what’s likely to happen next? Where are they likely to go?”
Brook’s study tracked these Canadian super pigs with GPS collars to track their movement and determine where they would head next.
The super pigs could blaze a path of destruction across the border.
“The U.S.-Canada border is a political boundary, not an ecological one. There’s no wall or big fences. Most of the boundary is continuous farmland or forested landscapes,” Brook stated. “Animals can easily cross it, and [wild pigs] are likely to do exactly that.”
His study provides an educated guess on where this wild swine will enter the country.
“We went from having a general concern about pigs crossing the U.S. Canada border to having very detailed maps showing where they’re most likely to move and establish populations,” Brook remarked. “This can be used to target control efforts.”
Hunters in northern states should be on red alert
Wild pigs ravage the ecosystems they enter and this poses a particular risk to hunters.
“This has very important conservation implications because wild pigs use wetlands and forests, and they do tremendous damage,” Brook said. “They’re rooters and tear the ground up. They are an ecological trainwreck. They eat anything from small mammals like mice to ducks and geese, all the way up to adult whitetail deer that they will kill and eat. There’s a long list of reasons why the last thing you want is invasive wild pigs.”
The Canadian pigs can cover more territory in a given day than their southern counterparts from European stock.
“This study is one of the most important of my career because it highlights the massive risk of wild pigs and how far they can—and likely will—move if something different isn’t done,” Brook explained. “Canada has been failing really badly at addressing the issue. If something doesn’t change soon, we’re in serious trouble in Canada, and we’re not being good neighbors if we’re letting them run wild into the U.S. as well.”
Northern states may soon have to defend themselves from the big pig assault.
