"Scientists call for urgent intervention, as bearded pig populations are devastated by the deadly virus on islands such as Borneo".
"Populations of wild pigs are crashing due to the spread of African swine fever (ASF), threatening the livelihoods of millions who depend on them for food, researchers warn.
With a fatality rate of almost 100%, ASF has swept across Asia, Europe and Africa, devastating domestic and wild pig populations over the past 10 to 20 years. The impacts are especially significant in Borneo, in south-east Asia, where bearded pig numbers have declined by between 90% and 100% since it arrived on the island in 2021, researchers said.
These pigs were once the most common large mammal species on the island, playing an important role as ecosystem engineers, dispersing seeds over large distances, according to a letter published in the journal Science. “These pigs have disappeared,” said Prof Erik Meijaard, the letter’s lead author and former chair of the IUCN Wild Pigs Specialist Group.
“I’ve gone around to everyone doing camera trapping in Borneo, and consistently we’re seeing pigs disappearing. They haven’t seen pigs on camera traps for years,” said Meijaard. He has also monitored seven camera tracking programmes in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, which were not on the island of Borneo, and found their pig populations plummeted in 2019 and 2020. “As soon as [ASF] jumps into a population it eradicates everything,” he said."
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