Glacier FarmMedia – Their names are Rudiger, Dietmar and Cindy, and they have a lot to teach about wild pig movement patterns.
The three eastern German wild boar were tracked far from where they were first spotted and tagged. None were fazed by natural barriers that would put off other animals.
Dietmar, for example, tended to range from Poland, which has a significant and widespread outbreak of African swine fever, and Germany, crossing rivers and wandering through forests on both sides of the frontier, said Egbert Gleich, a wild pig eradication researcher with the Brandenburg State Forest.
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Why it matters: German issues with ASF in wild pigs have the Canadian pork sector worried about our own invasive populations and their threat as a disease vector.
Gleich was one of the speakers at the first Canadian Wild Pig Summit in Brandon last month.
For Germany, that leaky border is a worry.
“We must stop the Polish disease front, and we must eradicate ASF in Germany,” said Gleich, who has been fighting the spread of the disease for years since it first crossed into Germany from Poland.
Wild pigs have proven a potent vector and reservoir of the disease. ASF has spread from Asia to Europe’s Atlantic coast through wild swine and commercial pig movement in areas with weak biosecurity.
While the disease is new to Western Europe, wild pigs are not. Wild boar are native to Europe, unlike Canada, where they are a serious invasive species threat.
German efforts at ASF eradication involve hitting hot spots of ASF infection and areas with high populations of wild pigs. If ASF-infected pigs can be eliminated, and wild pig numbers kept low, the Germans believe the disease’s spread can be stopped.
Cindy, Rudiger and Dietmar were followed by researchers to get better insight into the life of the animals.
Gleich said previous assumptions about wild pig ranges were overturned through their observation. The three wandered much farther than expected.
Females were believed to restrict themselves to a 3,000-acre zone, but Cindy wandered over 10 kilometres and was shot two kilometres from where she was first spotted.
The males are the true wandering spirits, such as the border-hopping Dietmar.
Wayne Lees, the head of Manitoba’s Squeal on Pig program, has studied the German research and said it verifies their observations about the roaming nature of wild pigs.
“I was amazed by the wide home range of some of these pigs,” said Lees.
