Can we stop invasive species by eating them? | News explained

Even though I’m scared, I know that the meat I’m going to eat isn’t just any old pork. This comes from a wild pig, which is one of the most destructive invasive animals in the USA. And because they cause so much damage to the environment, they are widely considered to be better off dead than alive. This means that hunting season is open year-round in Texas, with an invitation from officials to kill as many as possible.

Dai Due co-owner and chef Jesse Griffiths, who prioritizes local ingredients and sustainability at the restaurant, often features wild pigs on his menu. He is one of those who consider their slaughter an environmental necessity and describes them as an “undeniable source of protein”.

“If it were just one meat that I had to say is the best to eat, I wouldn’t even stop. It’s this one, right here.

What are feral pigs and why are they a problem?

Feral hogs are not native to the United States; they are the product of a cross between domestic pigs originally imported by European colonizers and wild boars. Because they reproduce at the same rapid rate as domestic pigs, their numbers have grown exponentially over the years to around six million in the United States, half of them in the southern state of Texas.

And as the amount of land used for farming increased, pigs had more options for food and shelter. The large crop fields are like a free buffet and also provide them with places to sleep and hide from people. Although some were relocated to create hunting opportunities, increased agriculture led to the establishment of new and destructive populations.

They eat crops, kill farm animals and damage property, both in the countryside and in the city. According to John M. Tomecek, a wildlife biologist at Texas A&M University, they cause “more than $500 million (€461 million) in damage” per year.

The environmental damage they cause is much harder to quantify, but includes their appetite for native tree seeds and the eggs of local birds and turtles. Yet they also damage fragile soils by rooting for food and pollute waterways with their excrement. In their natural habitat and in other parts of the country, they are hunted by bears and sometimes mountain lions. In Texas, however, they have no predators.

Invasive species around the world

This is a characteristic shared by many invasive species around the world, such as the lionfish native to the South Pacific and Indian oceans that invade the Caribbean and Mediterranean, or the mysterious Chinese snails native to Asia that cause problems in Canada and the United States. . When a non-native species moves into a new habitat, if there is nothing to control it, it can be incredibly difficult to control its spread.

According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), invasive species have played a key role in 60% of plant and animal extinctions worldwide. The annual damage they cause now amounts to more than $423 billion (2019 figures), a figure that has quadrupled every decade since 1970.

Morelia Camacho-Cervantes, a biologist and director of the Invasive Species Lab at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, says the best way to prevent non-native plants and animals from taking over is to prevent them from becoming populations established.

“Once they get to where they don’t belong, you have to eradicate them pretty quickly,” she said. “And by eradicate, I mean kill.”

Can invasive species be eradicated?

There are different ways to do this. Animals may first be trapped in large groups and killed or poisoned. With intelligent feral pigs, experts say it’s best to eradicate the entire group, called sounders, so they can’t teach each other to avoid humans.

In Texas, people can pay to hunt hogs from helicopters. This is the easiest way to kill the entire sounder in one go and is also the method suggested by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). In many cases – invasive lanternflies in the northeastern United States or goats and rats on the islands of Mexico – authorities actively encourage people to kill the invasive species.

From fields and oceans to the kitchen

For some, being able to eat an invasive species makes the call to kill it easier to digest. In the Mexican Caribbean, for example, edibility encouraged people to play a role in eliminating lionfish.

“Locals started fishing with the aim of consuming it,” Camacho-Cervantes said. “And then they were very creative with the recipes they prepared and they sold a lot. So they fished a lot. And now they have very small populations.

The number of feral hogs in Texas is not yet under control, and given how quickly they can reproduce, Griffiths doesn’t anticipate that happening. “We have to kill about 70 percent of them every year to keep the population where it is,” he says, deftly breaking down a dead pig.

Yet he points out another benefit of eating the pigs that roam free in Texas. “Every pound of wild pork we are able to serve also represents one less pound that comes from a failing industrial meat system.”

I think about it when I take my first bite of pork in many years, and it makes eating an animal easier. In all honesty, it’s surprisingly good. Delicious even. But overall, I think I personally will stick to vegetables in the future.