African swine fever ravaging Borneo’s wild pigs

Abstract

African swine fever has breached the island of Borneo, where it is wiping out populations of the wild bearded pig Sus barbatus. First confirmed in early February, the outbreak has driven a precipitous decline in this species in less than two months. Field sites in the east of the Sabah region are reporting a complete absence of live pigs in forests. Local extinctions across swathes of Borneo are a realistic prospect.Bearded pigs are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They are seen as 'ecosystem engineers' in the Bornean rainforest, where they are one of the most abundant species of mammal. Bearded pigs can be legally hunted under permit, and are an important source of animal protein for many communities.The African swine fever virus is already island-hopping across southeast Asia, threatening 11 species of endemic pig, including the Sulawesi warty pig (Sus celebensis). Opportunities to control the disease in wildpig populations are limited. Vaccines for domestic pigs are still in development, so the best hope for stemming loss of the wild animals could be to protect isolated populations in geographically defensible locations.

Mammals in an Oil Palm Dominated Landscape

“…It is likely that these findings represent a best-case scenario for mammal diversity, because most of the plantations the authors worked in were situated near large blocks of continuous forest, riparian buffers were long established and hunting levels appeared low (Wearn et al, 2016;Wearn et al, 2017). Also, all research that are reported here was conducted before the recent outbreak of African Swine Fever that has decimated bearded pig populations in this study area (Ewers et al, 2021).…”

“…An emerging threat to bearded pig populations in Southeast Asia is the introduced and highly virulent African Swine Fever (FAO, 2021;Luskin et al, 2021), which has driven a rapid and dramatic population crash in Sabah (Ewers et al, 2021). Oil palm plantations, as one potential interface between wild and domestic pigs and between pork product refuse and bearded pigs, may prove to be critical landscapes in which to manage this disease.…”

Bushpig (Potamochoerus larvatus) Hunting in Rural Areas of Madagascar and Its Health and Socioeconomic Implications

“…However, considering that Malagasy bushpig populations have been isolated from the African continent and therefore have not had any contact with ASF virus for about 2,000 years. Taking this into account, the possibility of observing massive mortalities of wild pigs after the introduction of the virus in 1998, as it has occurred with other wild pigs species in Europe and Asia (Ewers et al, 2021), could have been a plausible scenario. Nevertheless, hunters in our study did not report observations of animals with signs of swine fever.…”

African swine fever in wild pigs in the Asia and the Pacific Region

“…With regard to wild pig species in the same region, ASF was identified in S. scrofa in China in 2018 and Laos and Vietnam in 2019 (Denstedt et al, 2020). Since then, cases of ASF (occurring among mass mortalities attributed to ASF) have been documented in bearded pigs in Borneo (Ewers et al, 2021;FAO et al, 2021;Kurz et al, 2021) and Philippine warty pigs (Chavez et al, 2021). In the case of Philippine warty pigs, it was specifically noted that the disease appeared to be similar to that in domestic pigs (Chavez et al, 2021).…”

“…those reported as 'Suidae (unidentified)', are considered to represent wild boar, given the geographical origin of the reports. Neither WAHIS nor FAO reported the ASF outbreaks known to have occurred in wild boar in Vietnam (Denstedt et al, 2020), bearded pigs in Borneo (Ewers et al, 2021;FAO et al, 2021;Kurz et al, 2021) and Philippine warty pigs in the Philippines (Chavez et al, 2021).…”