Saskatchewan is dealing with a wild boar problem, according to researchers at the University of Saskatchewan.
Their population is increasing by nine per cent each year, the findings showed.
Farmers such as Garnet Harmon say they’ve seen the animal first-hand.
“On this kind of country road and here the wild boar was eating rose buds off the rose tree,” he said.
Harmon and his nephew, Darryl, both own farms near Bruno.
Harmon was unaffected by the pigs, but his nephew wasn’t so lucky.
“He left some crop out because it had rained and it hadn’t matured. So, during the winter the wild boar pretty well rooted and ate that up,” he said.
Most wild boars are concentrated in Saskatchewan. They can be destructive and damaging to crops.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2016 Saskatchewan accounted for more than 40 per cent of the country’s crop acreage.
Ruth Aschim, a Ph.D student at the U of S and lead researcher on the study, conducted the first published survey on the scope of the beasts in Canada.
“Wild pigs can cause soil erosion, degrade water quality, destroy crops, and prey on small mammals, amphibians and birds,” her report found.
“By 2017, they had spread exponentially across Canada, from British Columbia to Ontario and Quebec, with the majority in the south-central half of Saskatchewan.”
On average, wild boars weigh between 120 and 250 pounds.
“They can live anywhere, eat anything. We’ve seen wherever they’ve been introduced to the landscape, they’re surviving and reproducing,” Aschim said.
Aschim said she hopes the findings will be used to better determine how to manage the boar population.
