Hog in the limelight: on Assam’s pygmy hog programme

The decline of the pygmy hog — the sole surviving species of the genus Porcula and the world’s smallest wild suid — is a narrative about the decline of India’s alluvial floodplains. The pygmy hog depends significantly on dense grasslands to feed, conceal itself, and reproduce, so distress among these animals is an indicator of the floodplain suffering degradation. Protecting the pygmy hog can also extend protections to threatened species such as the Bengal florican, hispid hare, hog deer, and greater one-horned rhinoceros. The Assam government was recently right to laud the efforts of a captive breeding programme that increased the pygmy hog population in the State 32-fold in the last three decades. Breeding from a small founder stock while preventing diseases — suids are highly susceptible to swine diseases — and inbreeding requires conservationists to track pedigree, follow biosafety protocols, and condition individuals before release. That said, the species’ survival in the wild depends on the survival of specific ecosystems, and the latter remains a work in progress. The pygmy hog was believed to be extinct by the mid-20th century as floodplains were converted for farms, tea plantations, and flood control infrastructure and were degraded by invasive plants and altered flood cycles, with the unscientific burning of grasslands further fragmenting habitats. A few individuals were rediscovered in 1971, prompting one conservation effort. The current efforts are due to the Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme from 1995.Even now, the difficulty of spotting and counting these animals means that it is hard to say how many exist in the wild; per the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, there were some 250 individuals in early 2025, with the last surviving natural population in the Panbari grasslands area of the Manas National Park. Since they continue to be threatened, the captive individuals form the insurance group, but even so, the group’s long-term evolutionary fitness is still not guaranteed. Researchers are also alert to the accumulation of harmful gene variants in the population and low genetic diversity, and thus look forward to the pygmy hog’s natural habitats being restored. Alluvial floodplains are dynamic ecosystems; in addition to threats such as land conversion, efforts to ‘save’ them, such as widespread dry-season fires, can still destroy the dense cover the pygmy hog needs. On the other hand, suppressing ecological processes can leave trees and shrubs to turn grassland into woodland. Given the plan to increase the wild pygmy hog population to 300 by 2040, Assam needs to revert the fragmentation of its protected grasslands, especially in Rupahi and Kanchanbari, and to restore buffer zones around the Manas and Orang National Parks and the Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary. Published - September 17, 2026 12:10 am IST