Pay serious attention to African Swine Fever, urge wildlife experts

KOTA KINABALU: The threat of African Swine Fever (ASF) is not receiving enough attention, according to wildlife experts, despite the disease causing catastrophic damage to pig populations in Asia, Europe, and Africa.

Prof Erik Meijaard, former chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Wild Pigs Specialist Group, and Prof Benoit Goossens of Cardiff University, stress that the near-100% fatality rate poses a severe risk to food security, ecosystems, and the lives and traditions of millions of people.

Meijaard, in a recent letter he authored in the journal Science, cautioned that this socio-ecological disaster is currently being overlooked and not receiving adequate attention.

“ASF has decimated pig populations in Asia since 2018, with particularly significant impacts on the island of Borneo,” he said in a statement on Friday (Jan 19).

According to him, “ASF has led to local population crashes of bearded pigs, once the most numerous large mammal species on the island, of up to 100%,” and this decline may render the species critically endangered.

Goossens, who co-authored the letter, highlighted the crucial role played by bearded pigs in ecosystem maintenance and socio-cultural practices.

He emphasized how these once numerous pigs played an important role in steering ecological processes in Borneo’s tropical forest.

“Local hunting studies indicate that bearded pigs constituted up to 81% of hunted wildlife weight in some villages, while Malaysia’s Sarawak once harvested up to a million bearded pigs each year,” he said.

Goossens also pointed out that there is no evidence indicating that wild pig populations in Borneo, or other South-East Asian islands, can fully recover.

Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Dr Jeffrey Kitingan mentioned last year that ASF, first detected in Sabah in February 2021, was subsiding but that the state was still in the recovery phase.

Kitingan indicated that 20 districts were affected by the ASF disease and all the districts remained in recovery as of Aug 31, 2022.

In May last year, the Bring Back Our Rare Animals (Bora) movement reported that the wild boar population was making a healthy recovery in the Tabin conservation area in the east coast.

However, the ASF has been detected in several countries including Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines last year.

Goossens said that while ongoing clinical trials to develop an effective vaccine against ASF were showing positive results, this was mostly relevant for domestic pigs.

He emphasized that vaccinating wild pigs would require a different setup, such as oral vaccination with baits, which is far from being ready, and implementing this across Borneo would be logistically complex and expensive.

Both Meijaard and Goossens stressed the urgent need for action.

They warned that failing to acknowledge the socio-economic significance of the virus in low-income demographics could result in the irreversible loss of species and the ecosystems, cultures, livelihoods, and communities they support.

They have called for urgent research and interventions, involving rural communities, to prevent the spread of ASF to other regions where people depend on pigs.