A Breeding Programme That Began With Six Pygmy Hogs Taken From Manas in 1996 Has Released 194 Into Assam's Grasslands, and 15 Went Back to the Kuribeel Grasslands of Manas on 7 June 2026

On 7 June 2026, 15 captive-bred pygmy hogs, nine females and six males, were let out in the Kuribeel grasslands of Manas National Park in Assam. Kuribeel is where, Durrell says, the Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme’s six founder animals were captured 30 years earlier. India Today NE and the Mahabahu portal both reported that the programme and the Assam Forest Department had spent eight years restoring and protecting that grass with local communities, and that Kuribeel had no confirmed pygmy hog sign for nine years.

The programme’s partners count 194 hogs bred and released in Assam since 2008. The pygmy hog is the world’s smallest wild pig, according to the IUCN Wild Pig Specialist Group, and the breeding and release work is done at sites across Assam by a field team led by Indian scientists.

What happened at Kuribeel

The 15 hogs went into the Bansbari range of Manas, in Baksa district, under the programme. The Assam Forest Department’s Chief Wildlife Warden, an additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and the field director of Manas Tiger Reserve were at the release, Mahabahu reported. The Chief Wildlife Warden called it a “remarkable conservation achievement”. Assam’s chief minister posted about it on 9 June 2026 under the line “A dash to freedom”, according to India Today NE.

It was the sixth release in Manas since 2020, bringing the number of hogs reintroduced into the park to 78. Durrell’s account adds that the programme radio-tracks five hogs to study how they survive and use the habitat, with camera traps and sign surveys doing the wider monitoring. Its plan is about 80 further releases over five years and a wild population of roughly 300 animals by 2040. Both are the partners’ stated targets, not results, as of 29 October 2026.

Six hogs, and permission for no more

The pygmy hog stands about 25 cm at the shoulder and weighs 6.6 to 9.7 kg as an adult, per the Wild Pig Specialist Group’s profile, which also notes that both sexes build nests. It lives in tall, dense riverside grass of the foothills south of the Himalayas. The group says it was feared extinct after two decades without a sighting until 1971, when it was found again near Barnadi and in Manas. Down To Earth reported Barnadi alone for the 1971 find, so the two accounts differ slightly on where.

By 1993 the wild animals survived only in pockets of Manas, according to the programme team’s 2023 review. An earlier attempt at keeping them failed: the FAO case study, written by Deka, Narayan and Das of the programme, says more than 50 wild hogs were taken into captivity between 1971 and 1990, and by 1993 none was alive in captivity anywhere.

The programme was formed in 1995 by Durrell, the Government of Assam’s Forest Department, the IUCN Wild Pig Specialist Group and the Union Environment Ministry, with the Guwahati conservation group Aaranyak and the Indian organisation EcoSystems-India later doing the day-to-day work. In 1996, six hogs, two males and four females, were captured from the Bansbari range of Manas to start the breeding, per Aaranyak’s 2022 press release. Goutam Narayan, the programme’s founder, told Down To Earth: “We were given permission for only six hogs.” The Wild Pig Specialist Group’s profile says the capture was timed for the middle of the sows’ expected pregnancies, and that three of the four sows produced 13 young within six weeks. The captive stock stood at 77 within about five years, and four more wild hogs joined it later, one in 2001 and three in 2013, the press release says.

How a captive hog is prepared to be wild

The breeding centre is at Basistha, on the edge of Guwahati. A second site at Potasali, near Nameri National Park, has been the pre-release facility since 2006, the 2023 review by Dhritiman Das, Jonmani Kalita and Parag Jyoti Deka explains. Groups of unrelated, mostly young hogs spend five to six months there in enclosures of 2,400 to 3,200 square metres, and their supplementary food is cut to under a quarter of their daily need so that they forage for themselves.

At the release site each group goes into a bamboo “soft release” pen of about 100 square metres, ringed by a solar-powered fence against elephants, for three days with full feed. Sections of the fence are then removed and a camera trap is set. The authors write that the hogs are extremely shy and hard to follow, and that grass over 3 metres tall also shelters rhinoceroses, elephants and tigers, which makes fieldwork risky. Harnesses, ear tags and other attachments had limited success, and the team now uses radio transmitters implanted in the abdomen. India’s other well-known conservation-breeding effort, for the Great Indian Bustard, is covered in our bustard article.

Four release sites and the counts so far

Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary, about 150 km east of Manas, got the first release in 2008, chosen because the small, secure Gelgeli grasslands could be restored quickly. The Wild Pig Specialist Group records the first wild births there the following year. In all, 35 hogs went to Sonai Rupai between 2008 and 2010, and sanctuary staff were trained in habitat management and monitoring.

Orang National Park received 59 hogs from 2011 to 2015: 13, 12, 14, 11 and 9 in successive years, per the 2023 review. Aaranyak’s 2022 press release said the released population there had multiplied almost two and a half times and spread to areas far from the release spots. Estimates of the Orang population have risen with time and come from different methods. The FAO case study put it above 150 in 2022, the 2023 review gave nest surveys of 120 or more, and the June 2026 reports say about 200 and believed to be entirely wild-born.

Barnadi Wildlife Sanctuary, where the last definite record was in 1991, took 22 hogs from 2016 after programme staff and labour groups cleared tree seedlings and invasive plants in 2014 and 2015. Manas has been a reintroduction site for other animals too, and the rhinos moved there are covered in the Kaziranga article. For the hog, the releases moved to Manas itself from 2020: 14 in 2020, 12 in 2021 and 10 on 8 and 10 June 2022, so 36 by mid-2022, then 54 by the 2023 review and 78 by June 2026.

The totals published at different dates link up. The programme released 116 hogs by 2018 (35, 59 and 22). Aaranyak counted 152 after the June 2022 release, the 2023 review counted 170, Durrell’s team profile 179, and 194 followed with the 15 released in June 2026. One source stands apart: the FAO case study gives a total of 142 although its own list of figures adds to 140.

An India and Jersey partnership, with an Indian team in front

Durrell is a Jersey-based charity and the programme is a joint effort, which Aaranyak’s press release describes as a partnership of Durrell, the Government of Assam, the Wild Pig Specialist Group and the Union Environment Ministry. The people doing the work are in Assam. Parag Jyoti Deka directs the programme and is also programme manager of Aaranyak’s Threatened Species Recovery Programme, and Das is the field scientist. Durrell’s team profile says the programme grew from three people at one site in 1996 to 29 staff across nine sites, 70 per cent of them under 30.

The FAO case study notes that under the agreement between the partners the Government of Assam owns all the captive-bred hogs and that any move of animals needs the agreement of all of them. The then Manas field director said at the 2022 release that Manas Tiger Reserve is the source stock for the programme and that the new releases were a chance to build monitoring methods that can be repeated every year.

What the Red List says

The IUCN Red List lists the pygmy hog as Endangered under criterion D, assessed on 1 February 2016 (the entry credits Meijaard, Narayan and Deka) and published in 2019. It gives 100 to 250 mature individuals, a population that is severely fragmented, and a trend marked unknown. Earlier it was Critically Endangered; the programme team says in the 2023 review and the FAO case study that it was moved down a category in 2016 after the reintroduction at Orang. Durrell’s 2020 release page and Down To Earth’s 2018 article still say “critically endangered”, which the Red List entry does not.

A separate IUCN Green Status assessment by Deka, Hudson, Das and Kennerley in 2022 gave the hog a species recovery score of 8 per cent, in the category Critically Depleted, and the 2023 review reports that conservation action gives it a high “conservation legacy”. The same review puts the wild population at 150 to 250 animals, with 100 to 150 in Manas and a similar number in Orang. The species is on Schedule I of India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, according to the FAO case study and the 2023 review.

Fire, pigs and a virus

The Wild Pig Specialist Group calls dry-season grass burning the single most important threat to the pygmy hog. The 2023 review lists invasive plants and the encroachment of trees into grassland as other problems, which the Manas work addresses with trials of grassland management.

African swine fever, a viral disease of pigs, was confirmed in India on 18 May 2020, according to Durrell. Durrell’s account of 2020 says no vaccine existed then. Deka said “we could lose the entire captive population”, and the centres banned visitors, added fences and decontamination and took sweet potato out of the feed. Deka told the journal Science, as Down To Earth reported in April 2023, that the risk at Orang is low because few domestic pigs live nearby, while in Manas wild boar enter fringe villages where backyard pigs are kept, and that the effect on pygmy hogs is not yet known.

For the next stage the programme says about 80 more captive-bred hogs will go to Manas over five years, against a goal of about 300 wild animals by 2040.