Ecology, Conservation and Management of Wild Pigs and Peccaries

Chapter 29: Biological invasion of wild boar and feral pigs in South America

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(Taber et al. 2008; IUCN 2010; Altrichter et al. 2012; Desbiez

et al. 2012; Keuroghlian et al. 2012).

Different from other continents, the presence of peccaries

also limits the methods of alien vertebrate control, particularly

the most general ones, such as traps and poisoning, making strat-

egies more limited. The protected areas place another limitation

for the management of wild pigs, because they are a special space

under a different legislation to protect species, such as the pec-

caries. Hunting as a management tool, for example, faces severe

restrictions in protected areas (Brasil 2000; Carpinetti 2014).

The balance between the efforts for conservation of pecca-

ries and eradication of alien pigs makes South America an inter-

esting case unlike other parts of the world under the invasion of

S. scrofa. We aimed to update the information about this inva-

sion in South America and to discuss its implications on the

management and conservation of peccaries.

Review and Mapping Procedure

We updated the existing Geographic Information System (GIS)

about the distribution of Eurasian wild boar and feral pig until

February 2016 (Salvador 2012). Based on literature review and

field data, we identified the new records as precisely as possible

and considered the range of minimal administrative divisions

available in the World and Brazilian Administrative Divisions

(IBGE 2015; ESRI 2016), e.g. municipalities, departments, and

provinces. This information was intersected with other GISs:

ecoregions (Olson et al. 2001), political borders (ESRI 2016),

peccary ranges (IUCN 2010) and protected areas (IUCN &

UNEP-WCMC 2016). We used XTools table operations (Data

East Soft LLC 2011) for the same geographic projection (South

America Albers Equal Area Conic) to calculate the area of each

GIS feature.

When not reported anywhere else, we complemented

the review with data from the Javali project of the Caipora

Cooperative. The Javali project has researched and monitored

information on the wild boar in South America since 2007. It has

kept an updated spatial and temporal database of the occurrence

of the species based on proper fieldwork and library resources

with more than 1000 titles, including books, scientific journals,

magazines, technical reports, etc. (www.caipora.org.br).

Wild Boar Invasion According to the Political Map

The current distribution of wild boar covers 12 per cent of South

America across five contiguous countries in the southern and

eastern regions of the continent (Figure 29.1, Table 29.1). The

most invaded countries are Uruguay (100 per cent of the coun-

try’s area) and Argentina (42 per cent). The northern (Brazil

and Paraguay) and western (Chile) populations are connected

Figure 29.2 Geographic distribution of the two most common peccary species, collared peccary Pecari tajacu (left) and white-lipped peccary Ta yassu p e ca r i

(right), in South America. Map modified from IUCN (2010). Peccaries images © Carlos Salvador.

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