How the Yerevan Biodiversity Conference Can Help Save Asia’s Vanishing Wild Pigs

A virus sweeping through Asia’s wild pigs threatens not only wild and domestic pigs but also tigers, farms, food security and Indigenous community well-being. As governments gather in Yerevan, Armenia, for the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP17) from October 19–30, wildlife health must be a key focus.

African swine fever (ASF) has pushed five of Asia’s 12 endemic wild pig species into the Critically Endangered or Endangered categories of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List in under a decade. Few diseases have done this to so many large mammal species so quickly. The other seven, yet to be reassessed, likely face a similarly grim reality.

Javan Warty Pig female and piglets born in the wild in Baluran National Park, East Java, Indonesia. Photo credit: ©️Simon Bruslund/Copenhagen Zoo.

A Devastating Virus that Slipped Under the Radar

ASF reached Asia in 2018 and rapidly spread to 20 countries across the Asia-Pacific, killing almost every pig it infects. Wild pig declines peaked in 2021 and 2022, when the world was consumed by COVID-19. The virus kept spreading to new species, including Sulawesi’s babirusas and warty pigs, and the damage cascaded.

First, the pigs themselves. Infection has been confirmed or is strongly suspected in at least six of Asia’s 12 endemic wild pig species. On top of habitat loss and hunting, ASF could wipe out several island endemics within a single generation.

Next, the forest and its predators. Wild pigs are ecosystem engineers: they disperse seeds, turn over soils and are staple prey for tigers. In Malaysia’s Endau-Rompin landscape, camera traps recorded drastic declines in bearded pigs (99 percent) and wild boar (82 percent) during 2019–2023. Experts link fatal tiger attacks to vanishing prey, with similar concerns in Sumatra and the Russian Far East.

Then, food security and livelihoods. Asia’s pork industry has lost an estimated US$130–192 billion to ASF since 2018. Smallholders bore the heaviest burden, as many were driven out of business.

Finally, the people who depend on wild pigs. On Borneo, bearded pigs once made up as much as 81 percent of the wild meat hunted by weight in some villages, and for some Indigenous communities they are a cultural keystone.

Babirusa in Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Photo credit: Arief Rahman ©️WCS.

One Health’s Blind Spot

The “One World, One Health” concept, set out at a 2004 Wildlife Conservation Society-convened meeting, united human, domestic animal and wildlife health experts to warn that disease threatens people, food supplies, economies and biodiversity. Yet wildlife health, one of its founding pillars, remains a blind spot.

Wild animals are too often treated as reservoirs of disease, rather than populations whose health matters in its own right. Because ASF does not infect people, its toll on wildlife and livelihoods is easily overlooked. Wildlife health and ecological integrity must be core One Health objectives, backed by wildlife authorities with the mandate, diagnostic capacity and resources to detect and respond to disease.

Field observations point to the death of this babirusa from African swine fever based on the reddish patches observed on the animal’s chest. Photo credit: ©️Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park

What COP17 Can Do

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework commits governments to halting human-induced extinctions of threatened species. ASF, spread by pig and pork movements, threatens that goal. COP16 adopted a Global Action Plan on Biodiversity and Health that recognizes the need to strengthen the “environmental dimension of the One Health approach.”

But the plan is voluntary, and reporting is only encouraged. The indicators proposed for COP17 ask about surveillance and wildlife trade but not whether a country could respond if disease began wiping out a threatened species. COP17 can fix part of this by adding a biodiversity-and-health section to the eighth national report template.

In September 2026, 31 experts published an ASF roadmap of eight priority actions, building on a 2025 IUCN resolution. COP17 should back the three that cannot wait.

First is early warning: Governments should link wildlife, veterinary and public-health surveillance, so a pig found dead in a forest is tested as quickly as one on a farm. Rangers can supply that warning from places conventional surveillance rarely reaches.

Second is insurance: With no vaccine proven for wild pigs, captive populations provide a last line of defense. Only seven of the 12 endemic species have them. For island species such as the Togian babirusa and Mindoro warty pig, the window to secure one is quickly closing.

Third is money: Outbreaks unfold in weeks; grant cycles take years. Emergency funds must disburse within days. The roadmap’s five-year cost is orders of magnitude smaller than the pork industry’s losses. Pork markets recover; extinct species do not.

Before the Next Pathogen Arrives

The World Health Organization’s 2025 Pandemic Agreement calls for a One Health approach to preventing outbreaks at source. Stopping the next outbreak from becoming the next extinction means treating wildlife health as a standalone priority.

ASF began tearing through Asia’s pig farms and wild populations in the last Year of the Pig, 2019. The next Year of the Pig begins January 23, 2031, just after the deadline for the world’s 2030 biodiversity targets. Whether Asia’s endemic wild pig species are still around to mark it depends on the choices governments make now, starting in Yerevan.

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