The IUCN Wild Pig Challenge 2015 M ATTHEW L INKIE,JASLINE N G ,ZHI Q I L IM,MUHAMMAD I. LUBIS M ARK R ADEMAKER and E RIK M EIJAARD Abstract Asian mammal species are facing unprecedented Sumatra it is often referred to as lumba lumba pressures from hunting and habitat conversion. Efforts to (Indonesian for dolphin) because local people believe that mitigate these threats often focus on charismatic large-bodied when sounders of up to foraging pigs disappear from species, while many other species or even guilds receive less a forest patch they turn into dolphins and swim to the sea. attention, particularly Asian wild pigs. To address this we de- Also, because of their importance to many communities, veloped a rapid questionnaire survey and administered it to wild pigs are considered to be cultural keystone species. relevant experts to identify the presence, population trends The IUCN/SSC Wild Pig Specialist Group seeks to raise and conservation needs of Asia’s threatened wild pig spe- the profile of wild pigs, draw attention to their plight and cies. The results highlighted geographical differences within support conservation interventions. Of the extant pig spe- species (e.g. the near collapse of bearded pig populations in cies in the Suidae family, occur in Asia and of these are Peninsular Malaysia yet their widespread presence on threatened with extinction (categorized as Vulnerable, Borneo), and knowledge gaps for many endemic species of Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red the Philippines, notably the Critically Endangered Visayan List; IUCN, ), mainly as a result of hunting and loss of warty pig Sus cebifrons. To support field-based conservation forest habitat. The remaining two species, Sus celebensis and projects, we identified medium-to-large zoos in Asia, Sus scrofa, are categorized as Near Threatened and Least Europe and the USA that house Asian wild pigs and have ap- Concern, respectively. For most of these species there is a plicable conservation funding schemes. Our rapid survey lack of dedicated research and conservation management at- method, which yielded wild pig records from across tention, and therefore their status is poorly known. Yet they Asia, proved effective in filling many of the existing knowl- have a worldwide presence in zoos, which also have conser- edge gaps, and may be widely applicable in assessing the sta- vation funding schemes that could be used to support in situ tus and needs of other non-flagship threatened species. efforts if the conservation priorities were better understood. To start addressing this knowledge gap we developed the Keywords Habitat loss, hunting, Indonesia, Malaysia, Wild Pig Challenge , a series of succinct questions on Philippines, Suidae the status of Asian wild pigs, the threats they face, and con- servation opportunities (Ng et al., ). The questionnaire , sian wild pigs suffer from an image problem. Few con- was intentionally short (to be completed in minutes) Asider them to be as charismatic as orang-utans Pongo to elicit a greater response. We targeted members of the spp., elephants Elephas maximus and other Asian flagship Wild Pig Specialist Group and other relevant Specialist species. They have names such as warty pig (referring to Groups, such as Asian Wild Cattle, Asian Elephant and the noticeable lumps across the face) and bearded pig (refer- Galliformes, as well as academic researchers and ornitholo- ring to the bushy muzzle exhibited by males and females). gists, who often visit sites that overlap with pig species. Yet like the tiger Panthera tigris and snow leopard The first set of questions was sent via a group e-mail to . Panthera uncia they can be considered enigmatic. The experts, with a request for them to forward to other Sunda bearded pig Sus barbatus is unique in being relevant experts. This meant that we were unable to track South-east Asia’s only terrestrial migratory mammal spe- the exact number of people contacted. The questions fo- cies. It follows mast fruiting events in the forest and tra- cused on species status (presence/absence and population verses hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometres. In trend), and we received individual responses, of which nearly % were provided within the first days. Following a second group e-mail the total increased to individual species-level responses. These also included data † MATTHEW LINKIE* (Corresponding author), MARK RADEMAKER and from Warty Watch, an expert-based survey focused on re- ERIK MEIJAARD‡ IUCN/SSC Wild Pig Specialist Group. E-mail [email protected] cording presence of the Javan warty pig Sus verrucosus JASLINE NG and ZHI QI LIM National University of Singapore, Singapore (Rademaker, ). Excluding Sus scrofa (as a non- MUHAMMAD I. LUBIS Wildlife Conservation Society, Indonesia threatened wild pig species), we reported on the following *Also at: Wildlife Conservation Society, Indonesia countries and species: †Also at: Bawean Endemics Conservation Initiative, Indonesia ‡Also at: Borneo Futures, Brunei Darussalam . Received March . Revision requested May . India (n = country-level responses): pygmy hog Porcula Accepted May . First published online September . salvania ( species-level responses) Oryx, 2017, 51(3), 477–481 © 2016 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605316000557 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 08:35:22, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605316000557 478 M. Linkie et al. FIG. 1 Results from the Wild Pig Challenge , with presence or absence of South-east Asian wild pigs according to expert opinion, and IUCN species range data. Indonesia (): Sulawesi babirusa Babyrousa celebensis Peninsular Malaysia, which follows on from a previous (), Sulawesi warty pig Sus celebensis (), Sunda bearded study that documented this decline (Kawanishi et al., ). pig (), Bawean warty pig/Javan warty pig (), Togean A single respondent with long-term experience from the babirusa Babyrousa togeanensis () and hairy babirusa small Indonesian island of Bangka indicated that bearded Babyrousa babyrussa () pigs were no longer present on the island, which was probably . Malaysia (): Sunda bearded pig () only ever a peripheral part of the species’ range, but we did . Philippines (): Mindoro warty pig Sus oliveri (), Palawan record S. scrofa there. The species was reported to be wide- bearded pig Sus ahoenobarbus (), Philippines warty pig spread in Borneo, although more records are needed from Sus philippensis (), Visayan warty pig Sus cebifrons () Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), which was under- represented in our survey. Based on survey feedback we mapped the presence and ab- Javan warty pig (Endangered; of records indicated pres- sence of the South-east Asian wild pig species (Fig. ). Most ence) Species presence was reported from only one of eight ( %) respondents were unsure of species population trends sites in mainland Java. Java has one of the highest human − or perceived them to be decreasing ( %). The only response population densities (, people km ) in the world and for Visayan warty pig indicated an increasing trend, whereas many large-bodied mammal species have been extirpated only one of responses for bearded pigs indicated that po- (e.g. Javan tiger Panthera tigris sondaica) or are at risk of ex- pulations were increasing. The species-specific data yielded tinction (e.g. Javan leopard Panthera pardus melas and ban- the following results. teng Bos javanicus). That the Javan warty pig is reported to Sunda bearded pig (Vulnerable; records from respondents, occur in Tempuredjo is encouraging. The remoteness of of which % indicated presence) Species presence was re- Bawean island, c. km from mainland Java, affords a ported from only one (Endau Rompin) of six sites in level of protection to the resident warty pigs, which are the Oryx, 2017, 51(3), 477–481 © 2016 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605316000557 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 08:35:22, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605316000557 IUCN Wild Pig Challenge 2015 479 only known viable wild population, underlining the import- ance of forest and species protection on the island. Sulawesi babirusa (Vulnerable; of records indicated pres- ence) Reports largely confirm the little that is known about the species; it remains widespread on Sulawesi but is under high hunting pressure (Milner-Gulland & Clayton, ). Hairy babirusa (Vulnerable; of records indicated pres- ence) No records were found from the islands of Taliabu or Buru, although these reports are both from a single source (Eaton & Hutchinson, ). Surveys on both islands are now a priority for the Wild Pig Specialist Group. Togean island babirusa (Endangered; of record indicated FIG. 2 Conservation priorities for Asian wild pig species, presence) Although from a smaller island than the identified through an expert-based opinion survey (n = ). Moluccan (hairy) babirusa, reported species presence was confirmed. Recent unpublished population estimates indi- cate that several hundred Togean babirusas may remain According to the responses there are existing in situ and this may be among the largest populations of all three conservation actions (n = ) in Indonesia and India. babirusa species (Macdonald et al., ). Conservation research