I’ll discuss Al Oeming’s game farm later in this text. Who would even want to go on an African or Indian safari when the Alberta Game Farm had it all and much more conveniently?

Presently, game farming on the Prairies, and in Canada from coast to coast, has become serious business ventures for thousands of individuals or conglomerates. Bison (buffalo) farming is classified as game farming, with some 150,000 bison on close to 1,000 farms across the country — in actuality, from British Columbia to Quebec. Some 90 per cent of those bison herds are located on the Prairies.

While the term “game farm” brings to mind elk (Wapiti), white-tail deer and caribou, in reality some game farms are licenced to have fallow deer, moose, mule deer, reindeer, bighorn sheep, thinhorn sheep, musk deer and even mountain goats. Those are by no means all of Canada’s game farms; some have 200 or so acres of land for pheasants, quail and partridge. A few of these bird farms allow shooting for hunters with the intention of training retriever dogs.

Alberta has the largest number of game farms, at around 250, and also the largest number of bison and elk. Saskatchewan is close behind in numbers, with lower amounts in Manitoba and British Columbia. Saskatchewan allows game hunting on approved game farms, which collectively offer up to 100 hunts a year from approved animal species including bison. Organizations advocating for “fair chase” hunting such as the Boone and Crockett Club in the U.S. disapprove of such hunts and will not recognize trophy antler sets that originate from game farms.

Alberta game farms have been lobbying for years to allow hunting on game farms but so far, the answer has been a regular refusal. Game hunting can only happen in Alberta on game farms that have fenced-in wild boar. On the other hand, wild boar hunting is legal on all of the Prairies year-round permit-free, with some variations. In Alberta you can turn in a pair of boar ears for $75 a pair but so far to my knowledge there have been no takers.

Game farms’ income is primarily from exotic meat sales and, in the case of the deer family, the harvest and sale of the antlers. Some game farms actually trade in breeding stock such as elk (red deer) for New Zealand. Alberta game farm organizations state that game farm hunting, if permitted, could bring in up to $500 million annually and employ up to 300 individuals.

Noah of the North

Now back to the greatest of all game farms ever: Al Oeming’s Alberta Game Farm and its hundreds of exotic animals. Al Oeming, by the way, was co-founder with Stu Hart of the nationally famous Stampede Wrestling. Oeming sold his half of the wrestling promotion company to devote his time to the Game Farm.

Where else in the world could you walk next to 800-lb. Siberian tigers, lions, cheetahs, snow leopards, jaguars, pumas and leopards, and also know that back then he was the first to successfully breed these wild cat family members? Oeming’s hallmark was a cheetah named Tawana that he took to Canadian high schools from coast to coast. At this time Al Oeming also made documentaries on CBC TV where he was known as the “Man of the North” and sometimes as Noah of the North.

Where else could you view musk ox, Per David deer, European bison and all the camelids of the Americas – alpacas, llamas, vicunas, and guanacos, long before they became popular farm animals in Canada and the U.S.?

I could throw an orange to a 700-lb. grizzly bear and watch it stab the orange with a claw on one paw, deftly peel the orange with a razor-sharp claw on the other paw and finally pop the peeled fruit into his mouth. It was awesome to watch orange after orange.

Could I believe watching an attendant pet and hold a fully mature wolverine on his lap? You could watch huge mountain gorillas run around a walled compound, though they occasionally got loose but fried chicken would bring them back. How about watching a wolf pack behave, or a colony of prairie dogs perform? Well, all good things came to an end, due to operating costs and protestors who constantly campaigned against the game farm. Most of the animals were sold to zoos and private individuals worldwide, and by 1982 he re-opened the facility as “Polar Park,” with only a few hundred animals.

Al Oeming remained at the property until his death at the age of 88 on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2014.

In his extremely busy lifetime, Al Oeming also served in the Canadian Navy (1943-46), worked as a professional wrestler and completed a master’s degree in zoology by 1955.

When Oeming opened the game farm, it became a reservoir for vanishing and even vanished animal species, such as Siberian tigers, snow leopards, red pandas, Przewalski’s horses, Chinese Per David deer, European bison and Siberian lynx. These rare animals were just a few of the 166 species in a collection of over 3,000 animals. In 1964 Al was awarded the Everly Medal for Excellence in Conservation by the U.S. government, and an honorary doctorate by the University of Alberta in 1972, along with numerous awards and citations for his pioneering work. He traded exotic animals with China and other countries, all without any grants or government assistance.

In his final years following the creation of Polar Park, Al amassed probably the world’s biggest collection of horse-drawn vehicles, along with all the paraphernalia and countless sleigh bells of museum quality.

Oeming was a truly remarkable man who collected and successfully bred many of the world’s vanishing animal species — a true pioneer in his field with a remarkable nationwide influence.

It is unfortunate for game farms and zoos of any kind in Canada to face obsessive persistence from small groups of misinformed individuals. Take, for example, the 48-year-old elephant Lucy at the Edmonton Valley Zoo. A group of very vocal so-called animal rights activists has campaigned for years to move Lucy to an elephant sanctuary. This group has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a lone elephant, harassed the City of Edmonton, gone to the Supreme Court and ignored genuine animal welfare proponents such as Jane Goodall. A classic case of what we’d call the ‘tail wagging the dog.’ While Lucy remains in Edmonton today, unfortunately, politicians often change common-sense procedures and laws to accommodate these disparate views. All too often the vocal minority wins over the common-sense majority.

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African swine fever is harmless to humans but is highly contagious and deadly in domestic pigs and wild boars. It has spread from Africa to Europe and Asia and has already killed hundreds of millions of pigs, affecting global meat markets.

Seven dead boars in were found in Fagersta, some 200 km northwest of Stockholm, and more tests are being conducted, the Veterinary Institute said in a statement.

“At present, we do not know how the infection got in, but it is a long jump from the nearest infected area in Europe, and we therefore assume that it has happened through humans and not wild boar,” it said.

While the virus does not affect humans or other animals, it can be spread via pork or by carrying it on shoes, tools or vehicles.

An outbreak of African swine fever has forced pig breeders in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia to cull thousands of pigs since June and is putting pressure on governments to compensate farmers for their losses.

— Reporting for Reuters by Johan Ahlander.

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On Aug. 3, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada announced $944,340 in funding for Manitoba’s hog farm group. Funds were provided through AAFC’s African Swine Fever Industry Preparedness Program and were slotted for three initiatives: Squeal on Pigs, increased communication with small-scale pork producers and the development of an ASF response plan, should a local case of the virus be found.

The funding “will help protect animal health and ensure the sector remains resilient and competitive internationally,” federal Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay said in a release, noting the economic and psychological toll that a disease like ASF would have on the industry.

“The detection of African swine fever in Canada would be catastrophic for both the Manitoba and Canadian hog sectors and would result in not only a prolonged closure of international borders to pork, but a significant financial impact to our province and country,” the Manitoba Pork Council also said in a release.

Although the disease is not a food safety threat, Canada has watched the devastating impact ASF has had in pork industries in other parts of the world. In particular, outbreaks in China starting in 2018 reportedly wiped out a third of that country’s hog herd. The disease, which has a reputation for its mortality in pigs, was later found in other Asian counties in the region.

Europe has had its own struggles with the disease, while the U.S. and Canada (still ASF-free) were dismayed when it was found in the Dominican Republic last year.

Between 2021 and July 20, 2023, the World Organization for Animal Health reported ASF in 49 countries across five global regions, accounting for 951,000 cases in domestic pigs and 28,000 detected cases in wild swine. That includes nine countries that saw the disease for the first time, and 10 countries where ASF found its way into previously unimpacted regions.

Wild swine have also been a reservoir for ASF in various nations, so there is concern on the Prairies where invasive wild pig populations are a problem.

In Manitoba, the wild swine problem has sparked pilot control programs, as well as the Squeal on Pigs campaign that encourages the public to report wild pig sightings so they can be investigated and addressed.

“African swine fever poses a tremendous risk to our province’s hog sector, and we need to do everything we can to ensure that we are prepared in the event that horrible day comes upon us,” said Manitoba Pork Council chair Rick Préjet.

“We want to commend the federal government for not only stepping up with funding to support producers and our sector, but for their continued engagement on preparatory work with our producers and our staff to ensure that we are best prepared for an outbreak.”

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An isolated outbreak of the deadly hog disease was reported in northwest Italy at the start of the year, and the case found in Rome last week — the first detected in central Italy — has triggered fears of a spreading epidemic.

Andrea Napoletano, a close aide to the president of the Lazio region that surrounds Rome, told state broadcaster Rai the plan is to “selectively” reduce Rome’s wild boar population.

The region has banned picnics and ordered that rubbish bins be fenced off in large swathes of northern Rome, where the disease was found. Lazio’s boar population often enter the city, foraging for food in often-overflowing rubbish bins.

In a statement on Monday, the Lazio region said that out of 16 tests carried out on boars after the first case was detected last week, two were “very probably” positive to swine fever. Definitive results were not yet available.

Junior health minister Andrea Costa said the spread of wild boars was a problem all over Italy and a “large-scale cull” was required nationally, despite the concerns of animal rights groups and environmentalists.

African swine fever is harmless to humans but often fatal to pigs, leading to financial losses for farmers. It originated in Africa before spreading to Europe and Asia and has killed hundreds of millions of pigs worldwide.

China suspended pork imports from Italy in January after the illness was detected in a wild boar in the north-western Piedmont region.

The Italian government subsequently appointed a special commissioner to co-ordinate measures aimed at eliminating the disease.

— Reporting for Reuters by Angelo Amante.

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The provincial ag ministry announced the moratorium Wednesday and said it’s “developing regulations for licensing existing commercial wild boar farms.”

Regulations for wild boar and feral pigs are also to be developed under the province’s Pest Control Act, the ministry said. Those rules would declare feral pigs to be a regulated pest in the province, and would “specify the various monitoring and control efforts as well as public obligations to report.”

Provincial funding for Saskatchewan Crop Insurance’s feral wild boar control program, which includes surveillance and eradication work, will also be doubled to $200,000, the ministry said.

Agriculture Minister David Marit, in a release Wednesday, described the moves as “substantial steps that improve risk management and protect the resilience and security of our agriculture industry, which is a critical component of our provincial economy.”

The move also follows Ontario’s decisions last fall not only to regulate wild boar as an invasive species, but to phase out the production of farmed wild boar in that province entirely.

Wild boar were introduced in Saskatchewan in the late 1970s as domestic livestock, and over time many of those animals have “escaped and reproduced at a rapid pace,” the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) said in a separate release last month.

SARM — which in its release called for the province to impose a moratorium on new farms — said it now knows of “over 60” southern Saskatchewan RMs “suffering from overpopulated boars.”

Feral pigs now are thus “established within localized regions of the province, including agricultural production areas, and represent a significant problem due to damage caused to hay and crop land and to natural areas, as well as their potential to spread invasive plant species,” the province said Wednesday.

The invasive hogs also “harass” livestock and wildlife, and are considered potential reservoirs for livestock diseases such as African swine fever (ASF), the province said..

A federally reportable disease that hasn’t yet made it to North America, ASF cut into China’s hog herd by as much as half after its arrival there in 2018.

More recently, the disease is believed to have spread to domestic hog herds in several European countries through that continent’s wild boar populations and has turned up in hogs in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

“To this day, wild boar have free rein of rural Saskatchewan land with no predators keeping the population in check,” SARM president Ray Orb said in that group’s release Feb. 17.

“Each year, the risk of transferable disease grows between domestic hogs. We can’t ignore the damaging financial and environmental impact wild boars leave in their wake any longer.”

Sask Pork board chair Toby Tschetter, in a separate release Wednesday, said the province’s planned new regulations “will help protect the provincial hog industry and help us to keep our food supply secure. We encourage farmers, ranchers and the public to use the wild boar reporting services as much as possible.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Tests confirmed the disease in a dead boar in Ovada, located about 120 km southwest of Milan in northern Italy, the statement said.

African swine fever is harmless to humans but often fatal to pigs, leading to financial losses for farmers. It originated in Africa before spreading to Europe and Asia and has killed hundreds of millions of pigs worldwide.

The discovery in Italy could be a blow to the country’s meat producers as governments often block imports of pork products from countries where the disease has been found as a way to prevent transmission.

China and other pork buyers banned imports of German pork in September 2020 after the first case was confirmed in wild animals in Germany.

The Piedmont regional government asked city mayors to stop hunting following the discovery. Wild boar can transmit the virus to other pigs.

The government also said it is raising its surveillance of wild boars and hog farms and increasing cleaning measures on farms as much as possible.

“As in the case of the (COVID-19) pandemic, the African swine fever emergency must also be addressed by appealing to everyone’s collaboration,” said Piedmont’s health deputy, Luigi Icardi, in the statement. “Piedmont health system is working alongside operators in the sector to prevent the circulation of the virus and protect swine farms.”

In China, the world’s biggest pork producer, African swine fever destroyed half the hog herd within a year of being detected there in 2018. Last year, Haiti and the Dominican Republic confirmed the first outbreaks in the Americas in nearly 40 years.

— Reporting for Reuters by Caroline Stauffer and Tom Polansek in Chicago and Joice Alves in London.

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To that end, the province is making funding available to farmers who actively breed and raise wild boar to “shift to other forms of production such as heritage breeds of swine, other livestock or crop production.”

“Our government is taking action to phase out the production of Eurasian wild boar,” provincial Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford said in a release Oct. 19.

“Preventing the spread of new invasive species such as wild pigs is another critical step to safeguard the swine industry from the ASF, and protect the broader health of our communities, economy and natural environment.”

“Farm escapes of Eurasian wild boar amplify the population of wild pigs, which have already caused widespread problems in Canada’s Prairie provinces and many American states,” the province said.

Apart from damage wild pigs are known to cause in crops and other settings, other countries’ experience has also shown wild pigs on the move pose a significant risk for potentially transmitting swine fever to commercial pork operations, the province added.

The province will now fund “detection and removal efforts” and also regulate wild pigs under the provincial Invasive Species Act.

Specifically, the province will ban the “import, possession, transport, propagation, lease, trade, buying and sale of Eurasian wild boar and their hybrids” effective Jan. 1, 2022.

To help the province’s wild boar farmers toward a “faster transition,” those who own wild boar as of Oct. 19 — and who agree to stop raising wild boar within six months — will be eligible for support.

Information on a transition program intake for wild boar producers is to be made available on the Agricorp website “in the coming weeks,” the province said.

Eligible farmers will get $200 per animal to “eliminate their herd while also transitioning to other forms of production.”

The province’s announcement also included plans for a new targeted funding intake starting Nov. 5 under the federal/provincial Canadian Agricultural Partnership for Ontario pork producers, processors and other agribusinesses.

That funding will go to support “training, education and planning” along with “supply and infrastructure investments and modifications needed to strengthen swine-related operations, support industry businesses, and protect the herds and livelihoods of Ontario pork producers.”

CAP funding will also be allocated under the Partnership for an education outreach and awareness campaign for “smallholder” farms — those that market fewer than 1,000 hogs or 50 sows per year.

That campaign will focus on “increasing small hog producers’ awareness of the risks of (swine fever) and the need for strong biosecurity and emergency preparedness measures.”

Once the CAP intake information is posted, applicants will be able to submit forms on a first-come, first-served basis until Dec. 3, and can apply for reimbursement of 50 per cent of costs, up to $40,000 per applicant.

“In the wake of growing concerns since African swine fever has been detected in the Caribbean, this funding will support new measures that protect the prosperity and resiliency of the entire sector,” federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said in the province’s release. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The suspected case concerned a wild boar carcass found near the German-Polish border. A sample of the carcass was being taken for tests at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut laboratory, the ministry said in a statement.

“As soon as the analysis is completed, Federal (Agriculture) Minister Julia Kloeckner will provide information about the results tomorrow,” the ministry added.

Germany had feared a spread of the disease after cases were confirmed in wild boars in west Poland in past months with one Polish case found only about 10 km from the German border.

Cases have also been recently confirmed in about 10 other European countries in wild boars which are suspected to be spreading the disease.

ASF is not dangerous to humans but fatal to pigs. Some countries impose import bans from regions where it has been discovered, in non-farm wild boars.

Millions of pigs have died or been culled due to the outbreak in China and other Asian countries. The disease has slashed China’s pig herd by half since 2018.

There have been fears in Germany that its major exports of pork to China and other Asian regions could be threatened if the disease arrives in the country.

Asian countries including China regularly impose import bans on pork from regions where ASF has been discovered, causing painful loss of business for meat exporters.

Germany exported some 158,000 tonnes of pork worth 424 million euros (C$658 million) to China between January and April 2020, double the tonnage in the same time in 2019, Germany’s national statistics office said.

Sales were ironically fuelled by China’s increased import demand because the disease has devastated pig herds.

— Writing for Reuters by Paul Carrel; additional reporting by Michael Hogan.

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They are prolific, nocturnal, potentially aggressive, will eat anything, can handle wide extremes in temperature and to cap off an almost indestructible profile, they are as smart as if not smarter than many humans. As soon as they perceive or encounter a threat such as a trap or other control measure the survivors warn the youngin’s who don’t fall for that trick again.

(There was one report of wildlife control officials tracking some radio-collared wild boars from a helicopter in winter, they hovered over a spot where the GPS signal was strongest but couldn’t see any boars. Even a guy in a truck on the ground couldn’t find the pigs. Eventually they realized the pigs had dug themselves into a snowbank to hide.)

I almost feel badly that about 25 years ago I wrote a story for Country Guide about what was then the enormous economic potential of farm raised wild boar meat. I travelled to one farm east of Edmonton to talk to a wild boar producer about what seemed like an unlimited meat market opportunity. Aside from needing a well-fenced pasture, they were easy-keeping animals that produced two litters per year, and the public was certainly interested in this lean, natural meat product. How could this plan go wrong? (I think, I hope, I closed the gate after that visit).

Here we are 25 years later and the opportunity has become a living nightmare certainly in some areas of Western Canada. Either the industrious pigs just escaped from their yards, or gates were purposely left open as meat market economics didn’t pan out — whatever way it went these pests are quickly spreading, some say “exploding,” into new territory every year.

Dr. Ryan Brook, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Saskatchewan is one voice sounding the alarm at the potential physical and economic damage wild boars could cause to agriculture and the Canadian economy. He says there needs to be a national strategy developed to control or eradicate wild boar and throwing a few thousand dollars here and there at the problem isn’t going to cut it.

“I would give a gold star to Alberta of all the provinces; they’re certainly the most proactive and they’re the only province with an actual action plan,” says Brook, in published reports.

“But everything Alberta tries to do is in jeopardy because Saskatchewan doesn’t have a strategy… With the lack of action in Saskatchewan, they’ll have no long-term meaningful success.”

Brook is considered a bit of an alarmist by some who say the problem isn’t that bad, but he maintains farmers and governments need to take this seriously.

“Unfortunately, we’re well on track right now to have more wild pigs than people in Saskatchewan,” says Brook. “We could easily support over a million pigs. We have about 1.1 million people in the province and we’re well on track to be more than that.”

From a smattering of sightings of escaped wild boar identified in 2000, large swaths of central and southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are now the habitat for the ever-expanding wild boar numbers. Brook estimates the wild pigs will expand into another 80,000 square kilometres per year in Canada. That is a lot of bacon on the move.

Brook has a few concerns about the harm wild boars can release upon Canadian agriculture, but one of his greatest concerns is the impact on the domestic swine industry.

“The animals — whose population has mushroomed in the last decade on the Prairies — cause a host of problems,” Alexis Kienlen writes in Alberta Farmer Express. “But topping Ryan Brook’s list is their ability to spread diseases: Ones such as porcine epidemic diarrhea and porcine reproductive respiratory syndrome that are already present in Canada as well as ones carried by wild boars in the U.S. such as pseudo-rabies and swine brucellosis. But by far the biggest threat would be if wild pigs here somehow became infected with African swine fever, which has infected wild pig populations in Africa, Asia and parts of Europe,” said Brook.

Phil Abramenko, assistant provincial pest specialist with Alberta Agriculture, began a pilot project to develop a control strategy a few years ago. The counties in the pilot project, Lac Ste. Anne and Woodlands (in the Edmonton area), are where most of the wild pigs have been spotted.

“We are building a database of where wild boar at large are occurring in Alberta, so we can get a handle on the scope of the problem,” Abramenko, told Alberta Farmer Express.

“What we’re doing is building awareness and education concerning wild boar at large. We’re finding that the average Albertan is not aware that we have an issue with wild boar.”

Despite being nocturnal and very adept at hiding from humans, wild boars are increasingly making their presence known through sheer numbers.

“On average, on the Canadian Prairies, a female wild pig will have six young per litter and will have more than one litter per year,” said Brook.

The Alberta pilot project headed by Abramenko will be making recommendations on a permanent control program, with the goal of eradicating wild pigs in the province — although Brook said that will never happen unless Saskatchewan and Manitoba join the effort.

What about hunting?

Brook and Abramenko both told Alberta Farmer Express hunting is not a solution — and in fact makes the situation worse.

A group of wild boars, called a sounder, typically consists of adult sows and two age groups of juveniles born in the past year.

“If you shoot one or two out of a sounder, the rest will disperse and infest new areas,” said Abramenko. “They’ll go totally nocturnal because they’ve been educated, so that makes them harder to track or eradicate. They continue to have one or two litters a year.

“Hunting does nothing for eradication. It makes these animals more wary of humans and harder to trap.”

Although wild boars have yet to be found in Atlantic Canada, the Chronicle Herald in Halifax, Nova Scotia carried an interesting article on the no-nonsense hog control measures used in Texas.

Tackling the problem takes a multi-faceted approach because pigs are smart, Texas hog control expert Edward Dickey says.

“So, if you’re using single pig traps, for example, the older pigs will teach the younger pigs to be afraid of them,” says Dickey. “You’ve gotta really have an arsenal to combat these things; one single method will not work.”

The article says trapping is the best bet, using a camera to track the herd. Another strategy involves shooting pigs from a helicopter, and using dogs to track them down. Or even using a team of shooters to massacre an entire herd. Dickey likes to wait for night to fall, then take his team out with night-vision goggles and AR-15 rifles with thermal scopes.

Texas appears to have taken a no-nonsense, Wild West approach when it comes to “managing” wild boars. I’m not sure how well that plan would fly in Canada, however, a drastic situation may require drastic action.

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Wild boar, wild swine, Sas scrofa, Eurasian wild pig or just plain wild pig are becoming an established and destructive introduced species on the Canadian Prairies.

Wild boars were first introduced on some Alberta and Saskatchewan farms in the 1980s for exotic meat production. Why people chose to chew on stringy, gamey wild meats when domesticated pig varieties are descended from these wild boars is an enigma. There is no accounting for taste.

Unfortunately, wild boars either broke loose from meat farms or were released to the wild. Now these wild feral pigs, some crossed with domestic pigs, are widespread across Alberta and Saskatchewan and as far east as Manitoba and Ontario. Rumour has it that some individuals deliberately helped the boar escape, to have a wild population to hunt.

Wild boar, sows included, can weigh from 200 to 400 pounds. Unlike deer, moose or domestic animals that have one or two offspring a year, wild pigs can have two litters of six to 10 piglets a year. Wild boar generally breed from November to January with a gestation period of around four months. Sows can breed at one or two years of age and live for up to 15 years. In 10 years of breeding, one sow can produce up to 200 piglets. They breed more like rabbits or rats than other domestic animals.

Wild boars are social animals and normally travel in family groups or “sounders.” In cold winter months, wild boar groups build shelters lined with spruce branches and hay in dense brush and especially in snow-covered brush and ditches. They wander all year, feeding on cereal and oilseed crops, grass pastures, tree roots, berries, leaves, bark, rodents, frogs and carrion. Boars have been known to kill poultry, wildfowl and even fish. They can break into grain storage areas and grain bags, and will loot gardens for potatoes, carrots and anything edible.

Clearing the boar

In Saskatchewan, no season or licence is required to shoot boar. The same applies to Manitoba, but kills must be reported to Manitoba Food and Rural Development.

In Alberta only landowners are permitted to destroy feral wild boar with kills reported to Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. From 2018 to 2015 Alberta had a $50 bounty on wild boar. Some 1,000 kills were recorded, but the program was discontinued, as killing individual boars caused the group to break up and scatter. Research is underway to trap family groups rather than shoot at and disperse them.

In Europe, wolves are the only effective biocontrol for destructive boars. In Italy, a wolf can kill 60 piglets and sub-adults annually.

The elephant in the house on wild boar is not their crop destruction but the disease they could carry to other farm animals, including domestic pigs. Wild boars can carry many porcine diseases including foot and mouth and, worst of all, African swine fever. African Swine Fever is presently sweeping through China. Experts estimate that 300 to 350 million pigs will be lost to this disease in China — a quarter of the world’s pork supply.

African swine fever (ASF) is not the same as swine flu, which is infectious to humans. ASF is harmless to humans but can be spread via contaminated pork products or on the clothes of people working with infected pigs. The disease is not airborne but it’s hard to eradicate. Outbreaks in Canada and the U.S. would be disastrous to the pork industry.

Canadian hog producers better wake up and smell the coffee. We need to greatly reduce the wild boar population. There is a need to either restrict boar meat production or ensure that containment procedures are so stringent that boars will never escape. Alberta is rat free and forbids public ownership of rats of any kind. Wild pig control programs should be a high priority. Round them up or wipe them out before its too late.

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