If you’ve never seen wild pig damage on your farm, that’s a good thing.
That said, farmers in several provinces including Ontario should be on alert for signs of wild pigs living in the area. Wild pigs are invasive and not native to the province and can cause significant damage to crops, pester and predate on livestock, and can destroy habitat and food for wildlife.
Keith Munro, wildlife biologist with the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH), says that as of right now Ontario doesn’t appear to have any breeding herds of wild pigs in the province. That means the province is still in a position to prevent populations from getting a foothold.
Monitoring is a key part of identifying any populations that do show up, either through migration from other geographies or from farm escapes that go unrecovered. To that end, the OFAH has a pilot project running this year that supplies trail cameras and support in certain areas to confirm the presence of wild pigs. Munro says that the goal is to monitor and — hopefully — confirm that there aren’t any wild pigs.
The 2021 program is currently full, however Munro encourages people to set up their own trail cams and let the federation know if they do ever see a wild pig on the camera. There’s also an infographic on the OFAH website that landowners may find useful in identifying wild pig tracks and their behaviour.
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