This tiny hog may not be your usual neighbourhood porcine resident. Pygmy hog or Porcula salvania, as scientists have named it, is the smallest and rarest species of wild pig: just 60-65 cm long, 25 cm high and, in the case of adult males, a mere 8-9 kg heavy. Compared with a wild boar, it is 10 to 15 times less bulky, with a more streamlined body to match.
Small they may be, pygmy hogs are crucial to the ecosystems they inhabit. Today, they survive only in the grasslands of Assam’s Manas and Orang national parks, where they are known as nol gahori or takuri borah in Assamese and oma thakhri in Bodo. Historically, they ranged across a narrow belt of grassland south of the Himalayan foothills in Uttar Pradesh, Nepal, Bihar, north Bengal and Assam.
In these tall grass biomes, the pygmy hog’s ecological role rivals that of far larger creatures such as tigers and rhinoceroses. It serves as a “barometer” of habitat health—an indicator species. Using its snout, it digs for roots, tubers, wild fruits, termites, earthworms, eggs and other food sources found in the grasslands. This digging aerates the soil and enhances its quality. It also helps disperse seeds through its dietary and foraging habits.
This diminutive resident of India’s tall wet grasslands, however, is in grave danger. Exact numbers are unknown, but perhaps only a few hundred—probably fewer than 350—remain in the wild. Much of its former habitat has disappeared or become too degraded to support it. Uncontrolled grass burning, illegal cattle grazing and rapid habitat succession have taken a heavy toll. These tall wet grasslands, meanwhile, provide vital ecological services: they buffer floods in the monsoon and help maintain groundwater levels in the dry season, indirectly supporting farming communities on their fringes.
Saving the pygmy hog will require saving the tall grasslands of the sub-Himalayan region. These habitats must be properly protected and managed; uncontrolled dry-season burning must stop; cattle grazing must be strictly curtailed. Sites where the hog has vanished also need protection and restoration. Many species will return once grasslands recover—and some, like the pygmy hog, can be reintroduced.
Concerted efforts to rescue the species began in 1995, when the Assam forest department launched the Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme (PHCP) with the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the International Union for Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission (IUCN/SSC) Wild Pig Specialist Group. Aaranyak, a nature conservation non-profit in Guwahati, and EcoSystems-India, a charitable trust, later joined the partnership.
In 1996, six wild hogs were captured from Manas and taken to the PHCP’s research and breeding centre at Basistha, in Guwahati, marking the start of conservation breeding. Today PHCP maintains around 90 hogs in captivity and has reintroduced 179 over 20 years into four protected areas in Assam. Before release, hogs are trained to live independently at PHCP’s pre-release centre near Nameri National Park. Once in the wild, they are monitored using field signs—nests, forage marks, footprints and droppings—as well as camera traps and radio-telemetry. Studies at Orang National Park show that the reintroduced population is breeding, expanding and now numbers more than 250 individuals.
However, pygmy hogs are susceptible to domestic pig diseases, particularly African swine fever that these hogs have never been exposed to. If it reaches the breeding centres, India could lose the entire captive population. So captive centres need to operate with a high level of biosecurity to minimise the risk of any such domestic pig diseases.
This article was originally published as part of the December 16-31, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth