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A wild boar wallows in the mud.
Photo: Ryan Brook/University of Saskatchewan
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Each wild sow can have as many as six piglets a year.
Photo: Ryan Brook/University of Saskatchewan
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Wild pigs will root and trample crops and tear open grain bags.
Photo: Ryan Brook/University of Saskatchewan
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Wild pigs are very hard to spot and track, often requiring aircraft.
Photo: Ryan Brook/University of Saskatchewan
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Using a netgun from a helicopter allows the capture of multiple wild pigs, preventing the group, known as a sounder, from dispersing.
Photo: Ryan Brook/University of Saskatchewan
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Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan tranquilize and radio collar study subjects.
Photo: Ryan Brook/University of Saskatchewan
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A sounder of wild pigs, captured on camera west of Edmonton in 2015. The invasive species is a growing problem throughout the Prairies.
Photo: Ryan Brook/University of Saskatchewan
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A trail cam picture of a collared wild pig.
Photo: Ryan Brook/University of Saskatchewan
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By tracking the movement of the animals the researchers hope to better understand the scope of the problem.
Photo: Ryan Brook/University of Saskatchewan
How many wild pigs are roaming agro-Manitoba? Nobody knows the answer to that question, and that’s going to be a problem for the province.
Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan who was educated at the University of Manitoba has the best handle, and even he admits his numbers are far from certain.
“One of the really big challenges for wild pigs is they’re so elusive and they hide so well that you can’t do conventional surveys like (how) the province flies surveys for elk and deer and moose and caribou and these sorts of things,” Brook said.
