World’s Tiniest Pig at 10-Inches Tall, Once Thought Extinct, Is Returning to the Wild

Who would imagine that in the habitat of elephants, tigers, and rhinos, the world’s smallest wild hog is the animal that’s determining where the conservation dollars go?

Like the keystone in an arch that holds all the others in place, the endangered pygmy hog of North India is the keystone species of the Terai grasslands, and while those other large mammals can live elsewhere, the hog cannot. Therefore you have a situation where protecting a 10-inch tall pig has the added benefit of protecting the 300-pound tigers and 8-ton elephants.

Presumed extinct until it was discovered in 1971 in the Indian state of Assam by a tea plantation worker, it wasn’t until the 1990s that conservationists began breeding the pygmy hogs in captivity.

Fortunately the hogs, which represent the last living species in the genus porcula, breed like, well, pigs, and now between 300-400 are roaming the Terai grasslands again—while another 74 stay in captivity awaiting reintroduction.

This is all down to the work of the Pygmy Hog Conservation Program, (PHCP) established in the ’90s by Gerald Durrell of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.


continued:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/a-tiny-pygmy-hog-is-coming-back-from-extinction-into-north-india/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_medium=weekly_mailout&utm_source=31-05-2021

Good to see.