As many as 12 captive bred pygmy hogs were released into the wild- Assam’s Manas National Park- just a few months ago, bringing much hope and joy to conservationists. Why is the release of such a small number of these animals attention-worthy?
The world’s smallest pigs, the pygmy hogs once roamed a strip of “grassland plains on the Himalayan foothills – from Uttar Pradesh to Assam, through Nepal’s terai areas and Bengal’s duars'”. However, around the 1960s, they were presumed to have gone extinct. In the early 1970s, a few of them were spotted in Assam, closer to Bhutan. Even after that their numbers kept coming down because of loss. Degradation, and mismanagement of their habitats – grasslands. And so, to
Save the animal, the Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme was set up in the mid-1900s by the State and the Union governments, in collaboration with a few conservation organisations abroad. One of them was the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust of UK Naturalist Gerald Durrell who set up the Trust, is said to have initiated the conservation programme. As part of the plains on the Himalayan foothills-from programme, captive breeding of the hogs Uttar Pradesh to Assam, through Nepal’s began with six animals in 1996. In 2008, their re-introduction into the wild began pygym hogs were released into a Sonai-Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary, Orang National Park, and Barnadi Wildlife Sanctuary, all in Assam. With the most recent release into Manas, the number of these pigs released into the wild so far stands at 142. Since pygmy hogs are a critically endangered species, and only a couple of hundreds are said to be in the wild today, these captive-bred animals being able to adapt and survive in the wild is of great significance. Not just that. The conservation programme also hopes to rehabilitate these animals habitats, which could help the survival of other species calling grasslands their home. In the long-run, this conservation programme could save an entire ecosystem and not just one species!
Did you know?
- The pygmy hog is said to be one of the few mammals to build its own home, and with a roof at that!
- The animal is an “indicator species “because its presence shows how healthy its habitat is.
Picture Credit : Google
