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Feral pigs, like these shown in Florida, are alarmingly growing in number in Canada.
‘Super pigs’ threaten Upper Midwest
America faces an invasion unlike any other – and it’s a “super pig” problem. The invasive swillers have adapted to survive cold climes, and they’ve been thriving in Canada and some US states. The trouble is, these piggies breed at a higher-than-normal rate, and a whole lot of the 600-pounders threaten to trot south.
The pigs pose multiple threats to local lands, including the spread of disease to both humans and other animals — a feral pig even killed a woman in Texas, and they’ve been known to bite East Coast farmers – as well as crop destruction to the tune of more than $2.5 billion worth a year.
Fighting super swine. The USDA is on the lookout for boars invading Montana and North Dakota from the Canadian prairies, and it works to track wild swine throughout the US. With the Canadian invasion looming, Minnesota lawmakers proposed a bill to centralize the reporting and responsibility for dealing with the hogs within a single agency. Connecticut state legislators, meanwhile, may create a task force to focus on the roaming livestock.
But whatever measures these states adopt, culling the population will be tough. The pigs are hard to track and reproduce so rapidly that one expert noted you could kill 65% of them and their count would still grow.