Thread: Otago University needs Feral Pig DNA Samples

Hi Graeme, I can understand your frustration with Government Departments and Local Councils, the Rare Breeds Society has battled with them before. We also had run-ins with DoC in the early years, but now they warn the Rare Breed Society when they are planning on wiping out 'pest' animals on an Island or in a Conservation Area. So we have time to go in and capture a portion of the animals, to preserve in a domestic environment, in case future generations find they are actually useful after all. We've got various feral sheep, pigs and goat breeds, and even a cattle breed in this category.

But in this case, the research is simply to compare the genetics of various populations of pigs around the world, I presume to form a genetic tree of which breeds are genetically closer to which other breeds. Scientists have done this with cattle and other animals, so now it's the pigs turn. The NZ Rare Breeds Society is a non-profit organisation who's membership promote the conservation of heritage and feral breeds in NZ by directly keeping some of these breeds themselves, or simply donating money to help other members conserve them. Some of the membership fees go towards keeping a gene bank going and helping with some of the costs of rescuing endangered heritage or feral breeds, or some of the costs of building up the numbers again of very rare breeds.

We believe this conservation effort to be important, despite the fact that some of these animals are looked upon as pests, by some government departments. Genetic diversity is very important these days as numerous heritage domestic breeds go extinct across the world each year, in favour of a few commercial breeds. Even though, those commercial breeds aren't necessarily as well adapted to the local environment as the original landrace breeds are. It's the same with a number of plant species. We're losing genetic diversity in them as well.

This research is important to the Rare Breeds Conservation Society of NZ, as it gives us information on which of our feral pig breeds (possibly all of them) are unique in the world and their genetics need preserving. We already know that most of our domestic Heritage breed pigs are dropping in number, to an alarming extent. The NZ Pig Breeders Society used to have a number of members registering large numbers of purebred Large Whites and Landrace pigs each year, but these days they're lucky to get half a dozen registrations for those two breeds combined. We're losing the old commercial pig breeders left, right and centre as they retire and sell off their breeding pigs, because their sons know there's just not enough money in breeding pigs these days, as the costs are higher and the supermarkets won't pay the pork producers enough to make a living. There're now more Large Black pigs being registered by LifeStyle Block owners, who now make up most of the membership of the NZ Pig Breeders' Society. Other heritage breeds like the Tamworth and Saddleback are making a come-back, as far as registered breeding pig numbers goes.

There won't be any paperwork as such, accompanying the tissue samples being collected. The University just wants pictures of the animal, for identifications purposes and I'll use the general area that the hunter is planning to go hunting in, as a way of making sure that I obtain a diverse range of tissue samples from across the whole of the North Island, for testing. I am certainly not willing to be part of a plan to wipe out whole populations of pigs in the bush. From my personal point of view, as long as hunters keep the pig numbers under control, the damage to the bush can be kept to a reasonable level, where the bush is still able to replace itself as needed. It's where the numbers get out-of-hand, that too much damage is done and people need to start eating the excess pigs in order to get the numbers under control again.

I hope that has relieved your worries Graeme.