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One of the most damaging invasive species on Earth’: wild pigs release the same emissions as 1 million cars each year

Assessing the threat of invasive species is an important tool to reducing carbon emissions, as researchers from the University of Canterbury, the University of Queensland and University of Canberra explain on The Conversation.

Wild pigs turn over 36,214 to 123,517 square kilometres of soil each year. Photo credit Shutterstock

A big reason they’re so harmful is because they uproot soil at vast scales, like tractors ploughing a field. Our new research, published today, is the first to calculate the global extent of this and its implications for carbon emissions.

Our findings were staggering. We discovered the cumulative area of soil uprooted by wild pigs is likely the same area as Taiwan. This releases 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year — the same as one million cars. The majority of these emissions occur in Oceania.

A huge portion of Earth’s carbon is stored in soil, so releasing even a small fraction of this into the atmosphere can have a huge impact on climate change.

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are native throughout much of Europe and Asia, but today they live on every continent except Antarctica, making them one of the most widespread invasive mammals on the planet. An estimated three million wild pigs live in Australia alone.

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