Many years ago I started hunting in the Aliwal North district of the Eastern Cape. There were no warthog in the area. Then, maybe 12 years ago one started hearing of warthog in the area. Numbers gradually grew and today they are common in the same area.

The same story can be told in many other Eastern Cape districts, maybe with a few years difference in when they made a first appearance and when they could be regarded as abundant.

From memory I dimly recall hearing that the Cape Nature Conservation authorities have “introduced” warthog into one of their nature reserves, and that the population spread from there. Can anyone confirm this? Did other game farmers also ‘introduce” warthog?

My question is really not so much about who and why they are there now, which will be interesting to know. My question is: If the Eastern Cape area and vegetation suits them so well, why were they not indigenous to the area before? Or were originally present, but they simply hunted to extinction? Or did some pestilence wipe out the population?

Anyone with knowkedge about this, please share it here.

In good hunting.

Andrew McLaren

Andrew,

My African mammal guide notes that the Cape region was originally inhabited by a desert warthog identified by specialised teeth and now found in Somalia. The SA desert warthog is shown to have ranged through the Karoo and along the coast from about the Olifants river to somewhere east of Port Elizabeth (this is pushing my map reading and geographical knowledge a bit so please cut me some slack if you have more accurate info to work with). This warthog appears to have disappeared during the rinderpest epidemic.

As a side note, one of the recurring themes in the Kingdon guide is the evidence of paleoenvironmental changes shown by the existance of specialised , related specices (desert warthog, oryx, dikdiks etc.) in NE and SW Africa. These species are now separated by huge expanses of unsuitable habitat. I saw evidence of this climate change in Namibia (Gobabis area and on the Waterburg Plateau). In the thorn bush, faceted cobbles are pretty common. They are formed by centuries of sand blasting by wind driven sand. Dry as those areas are, there is too much vegitation for this to be happening today. For some extended time, central Namibia was a lot drier than it is now.

One way or another, warthog have made it past the cold dry barrier of the Karoo and into habitat originaly used by a slightly different flavour of warthog. Given that warthogs may be my favourite animal to hunt, that can only be a good thing .

Dean

I will attempt to answer the questions even though I am not in warthog country (yet).
There was a Cape warthog of sorts that died out long ago.
The officials at the Grahamstown reserves introduced warthogs on the basis of the above statement and they have since regretted it immensely.
Warthog remain a big money-spinner for game farms, so despite the contradiction of the regret, many game farmers do introduce them.
The bottom line is that they are good for those selling hunts but bad for farming and I think the ecosystem in general. Note the exact same sentiments about the feral pigs in the US, especially Texas.
For me, I love going to my mate's farm near Grahamstown every year and hunting warthog at leisure.

Thanks maki and Karoo!

Your combined reply made me brain - the bit I have - go "click", and using the keywords from your postings in Google I soon landed up here: Wildlife Ranching

I quote from this page:

quote:

P. aethiopicus the extinct former desert warthog of southern and north-eastern Africa (became extinct with the rinderpest epidemic in 1896).

:

Wonderfull site this AR Forum. Thanks Saeed for hosting it. A big 'thank you', specially to maki and Karoo, but also to all helpful AR members who are prepared to share their specialist knowledge to the benefit of all, who just needs to ask.

In good hunting.

Andrew McLaren

An obvious follow up question: Are warthogs starting to migrate into the Karoo or is it too cold?

Dean

Very interesting question. I had always thought that we are too dry, but reckon that they would do very well here. In droughts they would die right down, but there is always some relatively good vegetation where a core population would survive to explode again in good times.
They are not far away and a farm near me (admittedly in a relatively high rainfall area, but also very mountainous and cold) has a problem of too many warthogs after an illegal introduction.