Thread: Otago University needs Feral Pig DNA Samples

Originally Posted by Inger

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.

Well thanks for the comprehensive layout of your hopes and aspirations 'Inger'. I do believe in what you are doing, but history has proven before that as soon as people start paying attention to one species of game it usually leads to its wholesale slaughter.

Our Government cares not a damn for genetic diversity as can be seen in the past when we could not even protect such an Iconic and much loved species as the Wapiti from the greedy depredation's of our Government that began in 1981. The Govt lied to its people and set out without a qualm to destroy this herd.

Then in 1987 the Thar population was attacked by helicopter recovery teams with encouragement from our Govt Agencies to 'get the last one'. The population was reduced from 30 40,000 to just 2,000. If the last ones wernt so hard to get we would have lost this herd which is the envy of much of the world.

Then we destroyed the Enderby Island cattle that had some of the most interesting and useful traits of any cattle in the world.

We were living on our Yacht in the Sounds when Betty Rowe mustered us all to oppose DOC walking onto her property and destroying the Arapawa Island Goat. Another vault of gentic diversity that people were interested in saving. DOC didn't care, they methodically set out to destroy this animal that had lived there since they were released by Captain Cook.

When Ken Tustin met an Italian studying the heavily protected Himalayan Thar in the Himalaya's. He was asked "what sort of Conservation methods do you use on your herd in New Zealand". Ken replied "Um we shoot them"

This about sums us up as a country really. The lucky country full of animals that make us they envy of many in the world thanks to our far seeing ancestors. A country that was badly in need of animals to keep its forest open since the demise of the 17 variety's of moa that roamed in the millions from our high snow fields to the sea. If you don't believe this is true try counting in our Forest the species of plant that has developed self protection system to combat grazers

As a treat I have taken people to see our old exclosured plots we built to keep animals out in the seventies. These patches of jungle have become absolutely impenetrable with the whole mass of shrubbery excluding any decent trees ever being propagated and the mass is bound together with bush lawyer. A hideous example of what will happen if we let our wild animal numbers get too low.