Wild Pigs and CO2

Wild Pigs Release as Much CO2 as More Than 1 Million Cars
They are like tractors plowing through fields.




Feral pigs have the same climate impact as 1.1 million cars, according to recent research.

Using modeling and mapping techniques, an international team of scientists predict that wild pigs are releasing 4.9 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide each year around the world when they uproot soil.1

One of the study’s authors, Christopher O'Bryan, is a postdoctoral research fellow of the University of Queensland. He tells Treehugger that feral pigs are prolific globally.

“Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are found on every continent except Antarctica but are native throughout most of Europe, Asia, and parts of northern Africa,” he says. “As such, they have been spread around the world by humans and are invasive species in Oceania, parts of Southeast Asia, parts of southern Africa, and North and South America.”

For the study, which was published in the journal Global Change Biology, researchers only looked at areas where wild pigs are invasive and not native.  READ MORE