Research, coordinated through Squeal on Pigs Manitoba, will explore the prospects of using the detection of DNA from Eurasian wild boar in streams to identify the presence of wild boar in the environment.
Squeal on Pigs Manitoba is coordinating Manitoba’s efforts to eradicate wild pigs from the landscape.
Squeal on Pigs Manitoba Coordinator Dr. Wayne Lees says there are two groups of feral pigs roaming loose in Manitoba, the Eurasian wild boar and escaped domestic pigs.
The major one that we’re really concerned about are so-called Eurasian wild boar. That’s the wild boar species that was imported as a farming venture back in the 1980s and 1990s and animals escaped or were released and so they’ve managed to survive in the wild. They’re an extremely destructive species and they’re also a huge risk for carrying disease such as African Swine Fever.
Right now, we rely a lot on public sightings of wild boar or wild pigs and those are extremely helpful because it allows us to investigate further using drone surveillance or setting up trail cameras and then eventually setting up a trapping location. But, where there are not many people, we don’t get many sightings and so we’re looking into a technique to analyze water samples from streams to detect wild pig DNA in the water.
That work is being done in conjunction with by Assiniboine College and BDx Laboratories in Winnipeg. We’re in the early stages of validating the tests. We hope that that will be a really good tool that we can use to test stream water for the possible presence of wild pigs down the road.
~ Dr. Wayne Lees, Squeal on Pigs Manitoba
For information on the effort to control wild pigs in Manitoba or to report a sighting of wild pigs or evidence of their presence check out squealonpigsmb.org.
