SREL Reprint #1782
Introduced and feral pigs: problems, policy, and priorities
William L. R. Oliver and I. Lehr Brisbin, Jr.
Introduction: Interactions with people from earliest times to the present day have significantly altered the genetic, distributional and ecological characteristics of many of the world's pig populations. These interactions have produced two forms of non-native, free-living or "naturalized" pig populations which have successfully colonized many different habitats on all continents except Antarctica, and on many oceanic islands. These naturalized forms include both "introduced" populations, which are defined herein as essentially unmodified wild forms which have simply been transported and re-established in a free-ranging state outside their original range, and "feral" populations whose genetic structure has been altered through a process of domestication, before being re-established in a free-ranging state. Among the suiformes. two species of peccaries (Tayassu spp.), the babirusa (Babyrousa babyrussa), a warthog (Phacochoerus africanus, and the bushpig (Potamochoerus larvatus) are all represented by free-ranging "introduced" populations, but only two species, the Eurasian wild pig (Sus scrofa) and the Sulawesi warty pig (S. celebensis) have been truly domesticated and are represented by both "introduced" and "feral" forms.
SREL Reprint #1782
Oliver, W. L. B. and I. L. Brisbin, Jr. 1993. Introduced and feral pigs: problems, policy, and priorities. pp. 179-191 In: W. L. R. Oliver. (Ed.). Pigs, Peccaries and Hippos. Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan of the IUCN World Conservation Union, Gland, Switzerland.
This information was provided by the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (srel.uga.edu).